


The Working Title Job

by calumTraveler



Series: Working Souls [1]
Category: Un-Go
Genre: Adventure, Animated Appliances, Cat Toaster, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Mystery, Other, Romance, Toaster Cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:22:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calumTraveler/pseuds/calumTraveler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Bettenou Incident: a Schemer sees an opportunity, a Warrior is tested, a Demon makes a mistake, the World is thrown into chaos, and at the center of it all is the mysterious math puzzle, P Versus NP. What is a Defeated Detective to do when the Rising Sun calls him out by name?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude to a Storm

 

**UN-GO  
**

  
"The Working Title Job"

* * *

 

**A gunshot rang out through the dark and stormy night sky.**

"This is such a cliche you know!" A male voice shouted as a set of boots ran across a steel beam near the top of a half-constructed building, leaving a trail of blood behind them across the metal. "Leading us up here like this after everything you've done?"

The cloaked figure fleeing for their life had nothing to say as they climbed up a wooden set of stairs to the highest unfinished floor.

"What? You don't have anything to say to me now?" The owner of the voice asked as his own sneakers stepped down onto the blood-laced steel beam. "Are you really playing this scenario to the fullest? And for what? Your _audience?_ "

His shoes stepped up the wooden stairs carefully, calmly, with exact planning, unlike the person whose plans had worked so wonderfully until this final moment.

"This isn't going to end well if you're seriously going to keep this charade up," the man called out, "just stop this now, nobody will think any less of you."

The man stepped up onto the lone steel beam that stretched out over the ruined city, confronting the shadowy figure at the far end of the beam, back turned to him as they stared down at the city that looked up from below.

"It's time we ended this," The man said.

With a flourish, the cloaked figure spun around- cape flaring out to the side dramatically as they turned to face the Last Great Detective.


	2. Dinner Theater

"You, me, dinner," Rie Kaishou said decisively outside the door of the abandoned city apartment, "and no mysteries that threaten the world."

"Er...come again?" Shinjuurou Yuki, the infamous "Defeated Detective", said with a blink at the girl who had come knocking at his door to deliver this cryptic line.

"Don't play dumb with me, mister," the brown haired, red-brown eyed girl remarked as she crossed her arms, "You heard me perfectly well!"

"...No, I got that," Shinjuurou said, "you're asking me out on a date?"

"What else would I be doing with a phrase like that?" Rie said, "We go out to dinner, have a little fun, and don't have to worry about solving any cases that might or might not bring about the end of the world."

"Your father did something that made you angry, didn't he?" Shinjuurou deduced.

"Yes and No, actually," Rie said with a smile. "No in that he's gone out of town to talk to the world governments after the Bettenou incident. A _**LOT**_ of people in the world governments want to understand what happened in that TV studio, and what better way to do that then secret conferences held in a shady part of the world for an undetermined amount of time."

"And the 'yes' in this equation?"

"I'm mad that he covered up what happened in the TV studio," Rie's smile turned to a frown. "And I just know that he's going to end up lying to the world in the end. He'll spin his web and then the whole world will be lied to about all of that. With Inga and..."

"Right right," Shinjuurou said before she could say anything else. "Yeah, I'm pretty pissed about that too." It had been a real annoyance. Once again, Rinroku Kaishou's 'editing' of events had left the truth buried. Oh, sure, the real culprit, Seigen Hayami, had definitely been blamed for his crimes in trying to kill Rinroku and basically become a god among men, but the truth of how he went about it- Bettenou, the Illusion Kami- had been hidden away, replaced with a mere fantasy drug of the same name that didn't even exist.

In truth, Shinjuurou wasn't sure what was the lesser of two evils- lying to the public that there was an illusion creating drug that had caused all of the events, or straight up telling them that Gods and Demons existed and had the power to influence the world en-mass.

But humans would believe anything so long as the media sources all backed it up- and Rinroku's empire of Japanese Media along with his status as "Ace Detective" all collaborated to one 'truth.'

"So basically, this is a revenge dinner, right?" He asked.

"For a such a brilliant detective, you sure can be an idiot at times," Rie scowled at him. "That's where the 'no', comes in. I've really wanted to ask you out for a while now, but I knew that if I did it while my dad was around, he'd make sure that the restaurants would all be booked solid or something worse."

"So...just dinner due to a random alignment of coincidences?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Yes, exactly that."

"...Alright, that sounds fine to me." Shinjuurou smiled just a little, "What time and what restaurant?"

**"Eight Oclock!"**

"You're WHAT?" The Detective's Assistant, Inga, shouted in protest of Shinjuurou's announcement.

"Having dinner with Rie, is there anything wrong with that?" Shinjuurou asked in return as he fixed the bow tie around his neck.

"No... but...really!?" The young boy form of the Truth seeking Demon reacted in a rather exaggerated manner, "Tonight when we were going to watch that new movie that just came out on Green Disk?"

"BluRay," The R.A.I. Kazamori Sasa corrected from across the room as s/he read from a book.

"I wasn't really interested in that movie anyways," Shinjuurou shrugged it off, "you and Kazamori can watch it on your own."

"But Shinjuuuuroouuu..." Inga protested, "What about the after-show marathon? You know we can't reach the disks!"

"I already agreed to it," Shinjuurou shot that down, "and that's a flat out lie coming from someone who can climb up onto the bookcase top without even trying or stretch their limbs like rubber."

"Eheh..." Inga glanced to the side.

"And anyways, if you run out of stuff to watch- which I find really unlikely- you two can just play a card game or something else," Shinjuurou said to the boy. "It's just dinner, I won't be out _that_ long, and if something _does_ come up to keep me longer then I'll call to let you know I'll be running late."

"Fiiiine," Inga rolled his eyes and danced off towards the office television, "but you better bring us desert!"

"No promises," Shinjuurou said simply as he watched the Truth seeker slide down to the Digital Disk Player.

"Where are you going?" Kazamori voiced the question out of curiosity.

**"The Halkgenkian Platter."**

"This place looks new," Shinjuurou noted.

"Yeah, it's part of the whole 'reconstruct the city' movement that got started a little while back," Rie explained as they walked through the front doors, greeted by a waiter standing at the podium, wearing some fancy, early modern, late Medieval sailors costume. "HI!" She smiled at the waiter, "Reservations for Kaishou?"

"Table for two?" the man asked.

"Yup! That's the one!" Rie nodded.

"Please wait for a moment, I'll go check to make sure your table is ready," And with that, the waiter bowed and turned to go check.

"So what kind of food do they serve here anyways?" Shinjuurou asked.

"French themed, I believe," Rie said, "but I've never eaten here before, so I'm not exactly sure."

"Ah, interesting."

**In the darkened room lit only by the light from the TV...**

"This movie sucks," Inga said simply.

"As far as movies about renegade house hold appliances come to life," Kazamori noted, "that is a fitting description."

"Seriously," Inga pointed at the screen, "all they've done so far is just talk on and on and on about how many citys have been destroyed but not shown any of it at all!"

"Agreed," Kazamori nodded, "I cannot understand how it could have won so many awards for this political drabble."

"The trailers lied to us," Inga said with a frown, "that's all there is to say on the matter,"

"Shinjuurou had the right idea missing out on this movie," Kazamori added.

"Right, that too," Inga grumbled.

"So...what now?" Kazamori asked. "Do we switch to another Disk, or quit entirely?"

"Hrm..." Inga frowned as he thought it over. "Do you know where Shinjuurou put the card deck up at?"

"I do," and with that, Kazamori got up to find the deck of cards. "What game do you want to play?"

"I dunno," Inga shrugged, "any game really."

"Do you know how to play Poker?" Kazamori questioned.

**Quite a while later, at the "Platter", our two diners had been seated and already had received their food...**

"So then they said 'no, you', and tried to ram me up into the meat grinder," Shinjuurou said as he retold the tale of a previous misadventure while he cut into his steak. "Somehow I managed to get their jacket pulled up and twisted around behind them, and got that stuck into the grinder so Inga could question them."

"Wow!" Rie smiled with quite a bit of interest while twirling her fork into the long pasta noodles on her plate, "So what happened next?"

"As it turned out, their boss was actually this higher up guy at the first place we'd investigated," He continued on as he pulled up a chunk of meat from the steak. "The real snobby one?" He asked as a reminder before biting down on his food.

"Right," Rie nodded before she too took a bite of food.

"So we went to confront the guy, leaving the mook tied up in the grinder for the police to find later, only to find that somehow that mook managed to escape and beat us to the place just in time for us to watch the Snob shoot him through the shoulder." Shinjuurou said, much to Rie's gasp of shock. "Somehow, the lucky bastard survived it, but even then..." he shrugged, "he still got off scot-free cause of...well, you know..." Rie nodded at that, frowning slightly, "but that's besides the point. We still somehow managed to get the Snob caught up in his own words on a public confession the next day, in front of his own boardroom staff too. Confessed to shooting the guy, and got put in jail for that, despite everything else he'd done."

"Like how they caught Al Capone on tax evasion, right?" Rie asked.

"Yeah, something like that," Shinjuurou nodded.

**Meanwhile...a card game goes awry...**

"How did we go from Poker to Strip Poker?" Inga asked as he and Kazamori sat across from each other on the floor- both with various pieces of clothing missing.

"We ate all of the popcorn we were using as money, remember?" Kazamori reminded him as she laid out her hand of cards.

"Oh right..." Inga blinked at the cards and then groaned in defeat. "Damn it!"

The R.A.I. smirked at him, "Take of the tie, Inga."

**And So...**

"And this was all before we met at that costume ball, right?" Rie asked.

"Yeah, but it was about a week before that," Shinjuurou shrugged. "The cases were all starting to blur together before that though. So many wrongs hidden away..."

"Shame really," Rie said, "I think that would-" And then, her cellphone rang. "-Huh? Excuse me for a moment, that's a call from dad's desk..." She went to pick up her phone out of her purse, and then answered. "This is Rie," She paused. "Um, no, my father's out of town for the moment..." another long pause. "I set up his computer desk to forward calls to my phone, actually. He didn't want to be dis-" She cut off abruptly. "I'm sorry, but I don't think he'll be back for another few- Hello?" Rie frowned. "Hello?" She pulled the cellphone and stared at the screen. "Weird, we got disconnected."

"Who was it?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Someone calling for my dad," Rie said with a frown. "I didn't recognize their voice..."

"Great," Shinjuurou sighed, "knowing our luck, something bad is going to go down."

"Probably..." Rie sighed as she put her cellphone back into her purse. "But there's not much to do about it right now. Probably best to forget about it for now."

"Probably," Shinjuurou agreed. "By the way, why are you forwarding calls to your phone from your dad's desk?"

"So he doesn't get called back by some 'big case'," Rie said with a devious smirk, "I want him to sweat as long as he has to in front of the world's governments."

"Heh," Shinjuurou chuckled.

"But also, I wanted to know if it was something important," she said, "if it were a client asking for help on a case, or something, so I set up a different ring tone for the forwarded calls."

"Clever!" he said.

**When a Game stops being a Game...**

At some point during the game's final stage, when both were down to a single item of clothing, Inga had brought up an interesting theory.

"I think I might have absorbed some of Bettenou's powers when I ate her soul," Inga said, "and I think...they might work differently for me than for her."

What came next was an experiment to test that theory to its limits.

"So basically," Kazamori ventured as she leaned up to Inga, "forget the game and test a theory?"

"Yup," Inga nodded.

"Then I have an idea as to what we could test," Kazamori said.

"What's that?" Inga asked.

"I'm an R.A.I., and as such, a robot, a machine." Kazamori leaned in a bit closer, "That movie, boring as it was, provided an interesting premise of machines reproducing in a biological manner."

"I think I see where you're going with this," Inga smirked.

**...Things go awry.**

Shinjuurou's cellphone rang not fifty minutes later.

"Hello?" He answered.

 _"Yuki, Shinjuurou?"_ It was the familiar voice of Izumi Koyama, the female detective who they had all worked alongside on many occasions. _"It's Prosecutor Koyama we've got a situation."_

"Can it wait, Izumi-san?" Shinjuurou asked, "I'm sort of busy with something at the moment."

 _"Murder waits for no-one, especially when we're dealing with someone calling_ you _out by name with one,"_ The woman said.

"Excuse me?" He asked.

 _"Just come to this location, you'll see what I mean..."_ And as she said the location to him, he gave a bemused look to his date.

"Well...okay, if it's really that-" He winced as the line went dead- "Important."

"What's wrong?" Rie asked not a second before her Cellphone rang- a different ringtone from before, it should be noted, however.

"If I had to guess, I'd say you're about to get the same call I did," Shinjuurou grumbled as he selected his home office off of speed dial. "Give me a moment to call Inga..."

**As the Phone Rang...**

The two left at home didn't even hear it constantly ringing, instead too focused with a personal game of twister on the floor, without a board or any clothes...

**...The dial tone sat unanswered.**

Shinjuurou grumbled as the answering machine picked up, "Inga? Kazamori? Something's come up. Give me a call back when you get this."

He hung up at the same time that Rie did as well, a pale look on her face.

"I think I just lost my appetite," she said.

"Yeah, me too." Shinjuurou sighed, and raised a hand to grab attention, "Waiter! Check please."

**A long Taxi cab ride later...**

Shinjuurou and Rie stood in front of what was very clearly someone's house- surrounded by police cruisers and crime scene tape.

Silently, the duo stepped up to the house, drawing the attention of the police officer who had replaced the former Chief Hayami. "Woah, why're ya all decked up like that?" Mayoi Katawase, a ginger haired woman whose eyes were hidden by her long bangs, grinned at them. "Don't tell me this little investigation of ours is interrupting...dare I say it...a date, now are we?"

"No," Rie grumbled as she smoothed down some folds on her dress, "we were just finishing up when you called."

The Security Bureau Section Chief grinned as she spotted the blush on Rie's face. "Hue hue hue...You two..you're totally dating now aren't you?"

"Besides the point," Shinjuurou said, "what happened here that you need to call us both in on this?"

"The writing's on the wall, Yuki-san," Katawase said with a jab of her thumb over her shoulder, "quite literally."

**"To the Last Great Detective Yuki and The Compulsive Liar Kaishou: CATCH US IF YOU CAN. ~The Rising Sun~"**

"Cold," Shinjuurou noted as a camera flash highlighted the message written in blood on the wall. "So I'm guessing the Rising Sun is the name of the killers?"

"Caught the "Us" didn't you?" Katawase said with a grim chuckle, "The victim under the tarp is Otonoshi, Kenta, and I REALLY don't recommend looking at him, Rie-chan." She said that just as the girl had been about to pull the tarp away from the dead body. "They butchered him pretty thoroughly. Split him limb from limb and used each piece to write the message on the wall like giant paint brushes."

"Ew," Rie stood up suddenly at that revelation, taking several steps backwards. "So why call me in? They're calling out my father, specifically."

"That would be because we can't reach him," Izumi Koyama said as she entered the room. "His desk number forwards to your phone, Rie, and the personal number he gave me in case of emergency is telling me that he's out of the service area. Plus, it isn't common knowledge that Rinroku's out of town right now, so if _**a**_ Kaishou isn't on the case, either the one called out or the daughter that's been known to work as his investigative agent, the Killer might grow suspicious." She raised an eyebrow at Shinjuurou, "What, no midget brigade with you this week?"

"They had a Movie date," Shinjuurou said simply, not even elaborating on the point that he still hadn't been called back from the office yet.

"Fine by me," The woman turned on her heel, "the less weirdness I have to deal with on a day to day basis the better."

"So what did this guy do for work?" Shinjuurou asked as he started walking around the room to search it.

"Ah..." Katawase pulled out a note pad and flipped through it for a few seconds, "He was a programmer, Pre-War. He was working on the P Versus NP problem for some firm..." At the odd look Shinjuurou sent her way, she clarified. "It's an equation that can be used to crack any known type of digital security, basically. It's worth Millions in the U.S., there's even a prize available to anyone who can solve it."

"Even that software that you confessed to using, Izumi?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Yes, even that," Izumi scowled.

"So it's the sort of thing my dad would be interested in then," Rie said more than asked.

"Ah..Right well..." Katawase continued on, "Poor Kenta-kun here quit that to work as a computer janitor for the Military, and after the war went on to become manager of that security firm he used to work for."

"I'm guessing he never gave up on P Versus NP though?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Not publicly," Izumi said, "but we've got a missing computer tower and any personal digital objects. We think whoever killed him stole his completed work on P Versus NP and used it for their own purposes."

"What makes you say that?" Rie asked.

"It'll be better if you just see it for yourself," Izumi said flatly.

**She lead them out to the kitchen where a laptop had been set up on it, a woman stood there monitoring it.**

"This is Serket, Aranea-san," Izumi introduced, "the best tech analyst the department's got outside of Rinroku Kaishou's areas of expertise."

"I'm basically the understudy who fills in a play when the main actor is unavailable," The woman adjusted her silver glasses to a degree, reflecting the kitchen light away from her cerulean eyes.

"Aranea-san," Izumi introduced in return, "This is Rinroku's daughter, Rie-chan, and our consulting detective Yuki, Shinjuurou."

"Pleasure to meet you both," Aranea bowed in greeting.

"Yeah, pleasure," Shinjuurou glanced at the computer screen, which seemed to be displaying numerous video players at once. "So what's this?"

 _"This,"_ Aranea turned to the computer, "Yuki-san, this would be how we were alerted to the murder."

"Seriously?" Rie asked as she approached the computer to look at the screen.

It was a blood red background whose defining feature were the six video players showing multiple angles in the house- each changing every few minutes.

One such camera changed to a view of the kitchen, showing the five of them standing over the computer.

"Say hi to three million viewers world wide," Aranea waved up at the spot on the wall where no visible camera could be seen.

"Three million?" Shinjuurou turned to look up at the wall. "How is this possible?"

"This is why we think Otonoshi-san cracked P versus NP," Katawase said flatly, "this rogue website has superimposed itself onto multiple web pages world wide..."

"Wikis, Forums, social media sites- from web comics and email systems," Aranea said, "to government front pages and who knows what other various things... Whoever murdered Otonoshi, Kenta, set up cameras around his house, and are making them broadcast wire-less-ly into the internet and forcing the world to follow this case."

"...And nobody can take it down?" Shinjuurou asked, eyes wide in surprise as one of the feeds changed to an image of the phrase written on the wall. "Wait, let me guess...P Versus NP?"

"Exactly," Izumi nodded. "Every time someone gets anywhere near close to cracking this hack's encryption, it changes drastically and suddenly as if the code is rewriting itself as it learns from the attempts at cracking it."

"So even my dad couldn't stop this?" Rie asked, curious.

"Let me put it this way," Izumi said, "if Kaishou, Rinroku, had access to an ideal P Versus NP, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"That's a relief!" Rie said, and Shinjuurou found himself surprised to be in agreement with her on that subject.

"Instead," Izumi continued on, "we'd be having a conversation about how this hacked P Versus NP exaggerates it so far beyond it's original idea that it becomes a completely different problem and P Versus NP might as well be the puny little antivirus programs we're using against it."

"That not so much," Rie said, and Shinjuurou couldn't help but agree with her once again.

**A Quick trip outside and away from the cameras...**

"So what's this website all about?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Basically, we got an anonymous call about half-an-hour ago," Izumi explained, "they said to simply turn on to our department's own web page and...voila, here's what we saw."

"All of the information about the victim we uncover so far was also posted on the site," Katawase said, "but the P Versus NP stuff was in bold, italic, underlined, AND in a completely different font entirely."

"So this Rising Sun group is taunting us with the fact that they have a working P Versus NP?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Pretty much," Katawase nodded.

"Did he have any relatives?" Rie asked.

"No. A sister who died just at the end of the war," Izumi said, "parents died a year after he started work at the firm in the first place. No cousins, grand parents, aunts, or uncles either."

"Has a listed Niece, though," Katawase added. "She's supposed to live with him, but we haven't seen a sign of her all night. Kind of concerning given the murder, so I put out an A.P.B. for her."

"I guess the next step short of finding her is to investigate the firm Kenta-san worked at," Rie said, "see if he had any enemies there who might have known about the P Versus NP thing."

"It's a reasonable guess," Izumi said, "but I doubt we'll get anything out of them tonight. Considering how long their own website has been hacked, I'd say they'll be mourning until tomorrow."

"Wait, how long ago did this all start?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Basied on body temperature, Otonoshi-san was killed ten minutes before the website went live and the email came into our office," Izumi said.

"Just enough time to write the message on the wall and plant the cameras, I'm assuming," Rie noted.

"Why didn't you take the cameras down?" Shinuurou asked.

"There aren't any actual cameras where the feeds are coming from," Katawase said. "We went over the place with a fine tooth comb, checked every feed that was live and we couldn't find a camera to source it at all."

"Aranea-san thinks that the cameras are actually part of the building itself," Izumi said, "probably built into the house's drywall directly, like at the Sasa house, but at a smaller scale, maybe something more like a button camera or a fiberglass wire." Shinjuurou and Rie exchanged an odd glance with each other at that, and the Prosecutor didn't let it go unnoticed. "Yes, I know it's far out there, but it's all we can come up with at this point short of tearing down every wall in the building to see what's there."

"I was actually thinking," Shinjuurou began, "who has the resources to pull something off like that?" He glanced up at the house, "This is what, twenty, thirty years old? Otonoshi-san might not have even lived here until recently."

"Good point. We'll have to check to see if he had remodeling done recently," Katawase said. "If whoever killed him had surveillance on him, then they might have been waiting for him to finish P Versus NP so they could steal it and pull off this stunt."

"If it is recent," Rie said, "then it had to have been done after the war. There's no other reason they'd want to call my father out like this."

"So what am I," Shinjuurou asked aloud, "an after thought?"

"Possibly," Izumi said, "you did have a major part in," She faltered on her words slightly as she struggled to keep her emotions in check, "the Bettenou incident." She coughed. "So it's possible you were added in to make sure you were a known variable."

"I guess that makes sense," Shinjuurou muttered. "Still though, this feels off somehow."

"It always does when someone does something like this," Katawase said with a grimace, "it usually means they're going to kill again."

**Another long taxi cab ride and several phone calls later...**

Shinjuurou was annoyed as he left an answer on the answering machine beeped for the fifth time that hour, "Inga, Kazamori, give me a call back when you get this."

"Still no response?" Rie asked as they walked through the front door of her house.

"Nope," he replied.

"I hope something bad didn't happen," Rie said as she closed it behind them. "Then I'd feel just awful dragging you away from them like this."

"Knowing my luck, Inga disabled the answering machine for the movie and forgot about it," Shinjuurou mused.

"Probably," Rie tried to smile at that, but found her mood a little soured after the evening's events. "So much for our date, huh?"

"Seems like I can't go so far as an hour without stumbling into some case," Shinjuurou said as they walked down the hallway into the library/Rinroku's Office. "I feel like there's something off though. I just can't place my finger on it."

"Same here," Rie nodded, "how did they get a working P Versus NP, and modify it to broadcast over multiple websites at once all within half an hour?"

"They couldn't have," Shinjuurou deduced. "He had to have been working on it from the very beginning."

"You think Otonoshi-san was a part of this?" Rie asked.

"Call it a hunch for the moment," Shinjuurou said, "I could be completely wrong on this."

**A few minutes of searching later...**

"So the firm Otonoshi, Kenta worked for is called Numerical Security Advancements," Rie said as she read off of a computer screen from her Dad's desk. "Looks like there were a lot of parties interested in P Versus NP for internet privacy, especially after the reveal of the NSA's mass spying practices... But since they were also a general security firm, guess what else they dealt in?"

"Spy Cameras?" Shinjuurou guessed as he shelved a book on Cameras.

"The encryption system on _another_ companies surveillance system, cameras included, to be precise," Rie said with a laugh. "I guess we have another lead to follow up on tomorrow."

"The power supply for something like these cameras must be ridiculous," Shinjuurou mused as he picked up another book. "Invisible to the naked eye, able to peer through plaster, and able to transmit wire-less-ly all without being hooked up to any noticeable power source... Let me guess, this other company dealt with stealthily spying on people?"

"One second..." Rie scrolled down the page, "Ah...Looks like they deal mostly in 'Stealth Building Security,' high rises and the like for law firms and CEO offices. They've got a local branch here in Japan, but they look like they're a US based firm..."

"Name?" Shinjuurou asked as he leafed through the pages.

"Ah...'Steranko' Security?" Rie frowned. "Am I pronouncing that right?" She tried sounding it out, "Stuh...er...ahhn...kho?"

"I've heard of them," Shinjuurou said, "Supposedly they've invented a security system that learns and adapts to whatever is trying to break in."

"Sounds like something my dad would be into," Rie frowned, then spun around in her chair. "Hey, Shinjuurou?"

"Yeah?" He answered as he closed the book and put it back up.

"What would you say to staying the night for breakfast?" Rie asked.

"Breakfast...? But it's only..." He glanced at his watch. "Fifteen past ten... Okay, I see your point...sort of... It is getting late...How'd that even happen?"

"Well, Otonoshi-san's house being out on the edge of town probably didn't help any," Rie said as she got up from the chair and started walking towards Shinuurou.

"Probably," Shinjuurou agreed. "Still though, I'm a little concerned about Kazamori and Inga. I should probably give them another call if I'm going to stay..." He thought for a monent, "Do you even have any spare bedrooms? If not I could probably just sleep on the couch..."

"Why would you want to sleep in another room for?" Rie asked, scowling slightly.

"Well, your dad's probably going to kill me just for going out to dinner with you," Shinjuurou grumbled, "I'd rather not get even more trouble if he finds out I spent the night...Yeah, I think I should go see what's up with Inga and Kazamori-" somehow, Rie had slipped up to him and grabbed at his shirt sleeve as he'd turned to leave.

"I'm sure they're fine," Rie said with a slightly forceful tone, and a bit of a blush on her face that didn't go unnoticed by the Detective. And before he could protest, she insisted, "Stay. Please. You can stay in my room and-"

"Look, Rie..." Shinjuurou cut her off, "I'm not going to sleep with you if that's what you're wanting out of me. You're what, fifteen? Sixteen?"

"I'm Seventeen as of today, I'll have you know!" Rie remarked with an increased flush.

"And that's still a few years younger than-" The sentence caught up with him fully at that moment. "Wait. You're telling me that today's your birthday?"

"...Yes," Rie said with a nervous glance to the side as she admitted, "today's my birthday."

"Geeze..." Shinjuurou ran a hand through his hair with his free hand, "and here I was being a jerk."

"No you weren't," Rie pulled at his arm again, turning him around by a few degrees and bringing him just a bit closer to her. "I was going to tell you but I...I...!" She seemed to struggle for the right words at first, and then finally said, "I just didn't want to be alone today...even if just for a little bit..." In retrospect- "Dad left this morning right after he told me he had to leave...He didn't even wish me a happy birthday...and...And then this rising sun nonsense happened and totally screwed it all over" -Shinjuurou would never be sure if it was the look she gave him in that moment- "I just want someone to be there." -Or the emotion in her voice as she relayed her single birthday wish- "So please... Just be with me tonight. That's all I want out of today."

-But something made him cave in and kiss her.

What happened next was a blur of emotions and action, resulting in the next thing either of them being aware of was the door to Rie's room slamming shut behind them and they quickly focused on taking off their clothes.

When Rie did a spin and her dress hit the floor, leaving her completely naked, Shinjuurou briefly wondered for a moment if Rie hadn't been wearing underwear all night, or if her panties had been discarded at some point in the trip from the library to the bedroom, but that thought was discarded along with his pants a moment later.

"Like what you see, _Detective_?" Rie asked with a giggle, "Then don't hold back!"

He approached her and kissed her, hands holding her head steady against his while her hands wandered down his body. He returned the motion in kind- sliding his hands down her neck, and under the hair over the front of her shoulders before sweeping back and pushing all of her brown, curly hair to the back as his hands held a firm grip on her shoulders.

She then wrapped her hands around his waist and pulled him down onto the bed...


	3. The Rising Sun

The morning light shining through the curtains was a grim reminder of what would need to be done today, was Shinjuurou's first thought as he awoke to a vaguely familiar room with an all-too-familiar bed mate.

The night before, he had sex with Rie Kaishou, the daughter of the man who had framed his previous name for murder, and continued to circumvent his efforts to expose the truth every single time.

In the pillow talk between the first and second rounds, they both had shared their feelings on the way Rie's father, Rinroku, had constantly obstructed the truth. In the process, they realized something important about the case they had both been dragged into:

Whoever was behind "The Rising Sun" hated Rinroku's meddling just as much as they did to call him out as "The Compulsive Liar."

This was something that drastically narrowed the pool of suspects down to some degree, but who those suspects were was an unknown at this point.

As Rie had so curtly put it: "So basically we're still at fucking square one."

And then with a renewed sense of frustration, etc. etc., they'd gone at it again.

Now it was the next day, and Shinjuurou had a list of things to do.

First and foremost was finding his pants so he could get his Cell Phone and call the home office. Maybe now Kazamori and Inga would respond.

Shifting slightly to his left to look out over the room, Shinjuurou was surprised to notice that Rie was already wide awake and was staring at him with a rather red blush on her face.

"Morning," He said groggily.

"M-Morning," She stuttered, and that blush seemed to get even redder somehow.

"How long have you been up?" he asked as he realized that she had her arms wrapped around his left arm, basically pinning him to her.

"A few minutes I guess?" She didn't seem to know. "I... I lost track of time... Thinking."

"About what?" He had a guess as to where this was going.

"About..." She paused for a moment, then closed her eyes and rested her forehead against his shoulder as she sighed, "about what we're going to do about breakfast, first. Then what we're going to have to do in investigating the case..." All reasonable things. "...And what about us...as a... you know...couple?"

He sighed as well. "Well, we went at it completely blind..." He paled slightly as he realized that he couldn't really remember how many times they'd done it during the night, or for how long. "A lot." She giggled a bit at the tone he used. "So way I see it, we're at least going to have to go on a lot more dates at least. Hopefully ones that won't end up with us at a crime scene."

"You really want to-?" She sat up so suddenly that part of her hair, tussled up and out of place as it was, landed in her mouth- forcing her to spit it out. He cracked a grin as she pouted, and shortened it down to a "Really?"

"I don't regret what we ended up doing last night," he said as he looked over her face to watch her reaction. "Honestly, I think I was afraid of making any kind of move in your direction without your dad coming down on me with a missile."

Rie rolled her eyes, "I doubt he'd do that. Too many witnesses."

"Yeah, probably he'd try framing me for murder instead," Shinjuurou mentally congratulated himself for leaving off the "again."

"Yeah, that sounds like dad alright," She giggled, and Shinjuurou made a mental note to never mention the "again" part.

"So you mentioned breakfast?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Yeah," Rie nodded, "since you couldn't get in contact with those two last night, I figure we should head over there and see what's up. If they're fine, I was thinking we could go out to get breakfast while we catch them up to speed."

"Sounds like a plan," Shinjuurou said as he looked around the room, "though I'd like to give them a call first just to be sure."

**Once again, there had been no response, and so the two Detectives got changed and headed out for Shinjuurou's apartment as quickly as they physically could.**

Much to Shinjuurou's relief, the front door to his apartment was still locked.

Much to Shinjuurou's concern, there was a lack of sound from inside as well.

"Inga? Kazamori?" Opening the door would prove to be a very mentaly blinding event for both him and Rie.

No, I mean _Blinding_ , not _Scarring_.

As if opening the floodgates to a dam- a wave of blinding light seemed to rush out of the apartment the moment the door was opened even a crack- leaving the two Detectives standing there blinking their eyes until the stars vanished from their vision and the ringing from their ears...

Wait. No, that was just the telephone ringing.

"Okay..." Rie said as she rubbed at her eyes with her fingers, "what just happened?"

"I'm not sure, really..." Shinjuurou frowned. "But somehow..."

It was then that they heard two synchronized screams of terror and surprise from inside.

"...I don't think it was anything good."

Racing inside, Shinjuurou and Rie were caught off guard by how disheveled and broken everything in the office/apartment/living space seemed to be.

The answering machine was bleeding actual blood as it's ringer seemed to play in an endless loop, which would explain why his calls hadn't been going through, the clocks all seemed to have stopped at some point during the previous night, and the Disk Player was ejecting and retracting it's disk tray haphazardly without any real reason at all.

Shinjuurou didn't even dare see if the TV or the nearby computers were even working right, and instead followed the sounds of distress all the way into Inga's room, where, sure enough, there was Inga and Kazamori.

"Woah-" Rie, who had followed him, shouted in surprise upon seeing the duo.

Shinjuurou admitted later on that he, too, was caught off guard by the sight of them both being naked and in the same bed as well, but what was even more concerning was the subtly fading white aura around them- just like what had pulsed out of the door when it had been opened.

Inga had his hands wrapped around large locks of his hair, and was muttering about being tricked by someone, while Kazamori was curled up into a ball and basically sobbing about not having an inter- Wait. Sobbing?

"Wh...What the hell happened in here?" Shinjuurou finally asked, which brought the two 'children', for lack of a better term, before him out of their shock.

**A few minutes and a clothing change later...**

Inga and Shinjuurou sat across from each other at the Kitchen Table.

"I screwed up, Shinjuurou," Inga said it so quietly that Shinjuurou wasn't sure if that was what had even been said. "Bettenou tricked me into eating her soul."

"Huh...?" That was probably the worst reaction possible to this situation. "Okay, start over from the beginning here. What happened?"

"I realized a little while ago that my powers got modified a bit after I ate Bettenou's soul." Inga explained, "I wasn't sure if I was just imagining things or if it was because I'd gotten used to only eating Truths out of huamns and not that of a Kami...But I thought I could try doing something to see if my powers were really changed or not."

"Okay," Shinjuurou said, "so why didn't you tell me?"

"I was scared," Inga shrugged, "I thought you'd want to change our deal or something...especially after all the trouble we went through because of Bettenou in the first place..."

"Alright, moving on," Shinuurou held a hand up to stop that rain of thought, "what happened last night?"

"Last night?" Inga frowned, "isn't it still the 8th?"

"It's the ninth," Shinjuurou said.

"...Damn." Inga's whole body shivered. "Right...well...I told Kazamori about what I thought my powers could do now, and she suggested a way to test it."

"What way exactly?" Shinjuurou thought he had an idea of what was going to be said.

"An R.A.I. can't get pregnant because they're a robot," Inga said simply.

"Ah," Shinjuurou got the idea right then and there.

"So I tried to use Bettenou's powers to make her think she was a human instead of an R.A.I..." Inga blushed a bit, "but I think Bettenou planned for me to try something like that..." He looked up and met Shinjuurou's eyes with his own. "I ended up making myself fully human at the same time."

"So if the power of Illusions and Truth combine to become a power of making Illusions _Real_..." Shinjuurou's eyes widened slightly, "then if you use that power to lock yourself out of it..."

"You can't use that same power to undo those changes," Inga concluded.

"So that light show we saw earlier...?"

"Was mine and Bettenou's powers escaping out into the world," Inga said flatly. "Who knows where they wound up, or what monster has been born from them."

"So what about you?" Shinjuurou asked, "Are you alright from all this?"

"Other than feeling like a piece of my own soul's been torn out, I'm just fine," Inga said with a roll of his eyes.

"Welcome to the club, then," Shinjurou couldn't help but note the irony.

**Shinjuurou walked into the other room and sighed.**

"How's Kazamori?" He asked as he looked over the girl sitting on the couch and the girl who was fast asleep with her head in the other girl's lap.

"She fell asleep just a minute ago," Rie said in a whisper as she stroked a hand through the (Former?) R.A.I.'s hair. "She was really freaked out about...something. I don't think I've ever seen her like that before, actually."

"Well, considering all the electronics in here went bonkers around the same time," Shinjuurou glanced at the still malfunctioning Disk Player, "I'm guessing whatever energy wave we saw come out of here messed with her too."

"What was that anyways?" Rie asked.

"Inga thinks it was a trick by Bettenou to change his powers around," Shinjuurou decided just to spell it out, "and lock him into a permanent human form. That energy wave would have been Inga's and Bettenou's combined powers escaping him."

"What do you think?" Rie asked.

"I think they just got caught up in too big of an experiment," Shinjuurou shrugged. "He's probably right about that energy wave being what it was, but I don't think Bettenou intentionally lured him into a trap that's got this exact end result."

"So what exactly were they trying to do?" Rie asked.

"Kazamori is a... _was_ an R.A.I., I suppose is the right tense now," Shinjuurou said, "so the basic idea was to make Kazamori a 'real girl' so she could get pregnant as proof of Inga's 'new' powers. If he'd simply just had just created an illusion like Bettenou's, then they would have known right away, but if it actually worked and Kazamori became a real flesh and blood girl, then..."

"Wait, so basically the whole thought process was, 'turn mechanical parts into organic parts'?" Rie summarized.

"I guess it could be summarized like that," Shinjuurou nodded.

"Then that explains why your home phone was bleeding out actual blood," Rie said with a grimace.

"...Yeah, that just about makes sense," a glance back over to the dead answering machine showed that it was literally dead, having bled out entirely at some point and had finally gone silent. " _ **If**_ Inga's right about it being a post-humus trap, then any little thing Inga could have tested his powers out with might have ended up in the same result of his powers vanishing. But if this was just him putting out a generic "Make human" wave, then he might have been caught up in it just the same." He sighed, "At any rate, we'll have to put this on the back burner for now. We've got a potential serial killer out on the loose, after all."

"So do we clue them in on it?" Rie asked.

"Probably would be for the best if we kept an eye on them," Shinjuurou said, "but after breakfast. That'll probably get everyone back up to speed."

"I'd rather not wait to see what else got changed in this apartment by that light pulse," Rie said, "so fast food?"

"Sounds good to me."

**An hour later, at a certain breakfast fast food restaurant...**

"So you **bought** us breakfast instead of _**bringing**_ us breakfast," Inga said as he dove his fork into a piece of pancake. "Apology for missing the (admittedly rather lame) movie accepted, Shinjuurou!" And with that, he stuck the fork in his mouth with a "Nom!"

The four of them (Well, three at the moment, as Rie was off making a few phone calls) sat at a booth in the corner of the restaurant as Shinjuurou explained the case to them in about as few details as possible.

"Guy got killed, Message was written on the wall, hidden cameras recorded a live feed and broadcast it to the internet," ended up being the basic summary.

"I suppose the timing worked out okay then," Kazamori said, a bit more quietly than usual, "that I can't access the internet personally at the moment..." She seemed to be having trouble adopting to the fact that her entire body was entirely organic now. To be fair to the former R.A.I. though, Shinjuurou was finding the cosmetic changes to the girl to be a bit difficult to swallow as well.

Her skin had taken on a slightly more pinkish tone, and her eyes, which had once been an eerie combination of yellow and black that didn't seem naturally layered at all now seemed more normal looking with the subtraction of some of the heaviest black coloring.

"Yeah, if there's one good thing to come out of this," Inga agreed, and things went silent for a few moments at the turn of conversation.

"Good news!" Rie said as she sat down at the table, "I managed to get us an appointment at Otonoshi-san's Security firm with the new CEO when the firm opens later this morning, and another one at Steranko's local office just a bit after that."

"Well that's the first good news I've heard with regards to this case all day," Shinjuurou said, "when does the firm open?"

**"In about an hour."**

"Hello and Welcome to the Numerical Security Advancements Firm," a Secretary said to the two detectives and their "Assistants" who had entered. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Hi," Rie said to the woman who smiled way too brightly, "we're here with regards to the murder of your former CEO, Otonoshi, Kenta-san?"

"oh..." the woman's smile faded immediately. "Right, of course. Follow me." She stood up from her desk. "I'll take you to Asashina-san's office."

The Secretary lead them to an elevator, and pushed a button to take them up to a higher floor.

As the elevator jerked to life, Shinjuurou asked, "Did you know Otonoshi-san well?"

"Otonoshi-san?" The woman asked. "No, I was only hired about a month ago, around the time that the Sasa Company's Heir was killed in that fire, I think it was?" Kazamori and Inga both tensed up at the mention of the case, but the secretary didn't seem to notice. "I never spoke with him much beyond the initial interview phase. He was very...what's the word?...Tense, I believe. Yes, he seemed very tense all the time. Very secretive, especially about the project he was personally heading up."

"What kind of project?" Rie asked.

"I never knew much of the details," The Secretary answered, "only that it had something to do with an older set of supposedly canceled projects."

**The elevator dinged, and she lead them to the new CEO's old office.**

"Asahina-san?" The secretary knocked on the door, "Your Eight A.M. appointment is here to see you."

"Please, come in," came the voice of the man, Mitsuku Asahina, the new CEO of the Firm, and she let them in. "So you two must be the detectives that were called out by that stunt last night?"

"Right," Shinjuurou nodded, "I'm Yuki, Shinjuurou, this is my assistant Inga," he motioned to Inga, who was busy glancing around the office curiously.

"I'm Kaishou, Rie, filling in for my father who's out of town on business," Rie said, then motioned to Kazamori, "this is my assistant, Kazemori." The intentional syllable change didn't go unnoticed by the R.A.I., who simply bowed in acknowledgement and greeting.

"A pleasure to meet you."

"I'm Asahina, Mitsuku, and I suppose I'm the new CEO with Kenta's death," the man, who was busy packing up his belongings of the desk into a box. "I hope you pardon the mess, but I'm just packing up my things for moving elsewhere."

"Moving to the new office?" Rie asked.

"No, the Police haven't even shown up yet to dig through any of his things," The man shook his head. "I don't dare take his office anyways. It doesn't feel right, somehow...Actually, I'm preparing for the inevitability that the company will be bought out soon enough and I'll be out of a job."

"What makes you say that?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Well, let's just say that, dare I speak ill of the dead, Kenta wasn't the best CEO the company could have had in recent months," Mitsuku said. "Money was being siphoned off into shady projects he wouldn't tell me anything about, whole departments were formed, sworn to secrecy with NDAs, then laid off just about as suddenly as they were made... Plus, in the recent weeks leading up to this tragedy, there were rumors about being bought out by J.J. Systems..." He sent a glance at Rie, "Your father's company, if I'm not mistaken, Miss...Rie-chan was it?"

"Yes, well," Rie coughed politely, "this is the first I've heard of such a buy out. I doubt it was a thing my father was interested in."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that one," Mitsuku sighed. "Kenta was drawing a lot of bad attention to this company from the shady sides of business, and I used to think that was just the tip of the iceberg...But his murder just seems to be the tip of an even larger one...or perhaps just a tip of another part of the same one, just hidden by the ocean's depths."

"That's a really long metaphor there," Inga remarked as he looked over what appeared to be a high school photograph of the man before them, another man who could be assumed to be Kenta Otonoshi, and an unknown, though somewhat familiar woman in round glasses.

"Yes, I suppose it is rather large," Mitsuku agreed.

"Was Otonoshi-san working on any projects related to P versus NP before he died?" Rie asked.

"Miss, P Versus NP is not something that one just gives up," Mitsuku said with a grimace. "I started to help Kenta with it before we started high school, and the next thing I knew, it was the dead of winter, a mere week before Christmas of the following year. Even years later when Kenta got me a job offer here at this firm, it was that damned equation that convinced me to take it. So yes, Kenta was working on P Versus NP before he died." He shrugged slightly, "Whether or not it's what got him killed or not, I can't say for certain."

"You mentioned some shady projects," Shinjuurou began, "and the secretary we talked to on the way in said that Otonoshi-san was working on some secret project that was tied into older, canceled ones. Did he happen to confide anything to you about that?"

"That would be another reason I suspect this Firm is not long for this world," Mitsuku said. "Kenta refused to tell me anything of what these projects of his were, even when I became his second in command." He sighed yet again, "Kenta grew very paranoid after the war. He changed so much that he might as well have been a completely different person. The _only_ time I can remember him confiding anything to me that might be of relevance was when he was convinced someone was coming to kill him after all that stuff about J.J. System's Chairman supposedly being killed in that studio bombing."

"Do you think anyone might have really wanted him dead?" Rie asked.

"You're asking the wrong person, Miss," Mitsuku said with a grumble. "After all the shit he's pulled with this company, I can think of over a dozen people, including myself, who would want to kill him for what he's done."

"Two more questions," Shinjuurou said, "then we'll let you get back to your packing."

"Sure," Mitsuku said.

"The first is if we could have access to Kenta-san's office to do a little digging around for anything?"

"Yeah, sure, I don't got a problem with that. I think the Police should be here in a few minutes to do that too."

"The second is this," Shinjuurou then asked a major question, "did Kenta-san remodel his house at any time in the last few years?"

"Are you kidding me?" Mitsuku laughed hollowly at that question. "What part of "Paranoid" did you not get about this guy? He's had his house remodeled at least six times that I can think of since he became CEO. He once told me that his security systems need to always be the best and latest and that the CEO should have just as much security as any project run."

"Would he have put in the cameras that ended up broadcasting to the internet?" Rie asked.

"Knowing Kenta? Yes," Mitsuku said with a nod.

"Thank you for your time," Rie bowed.

"Sure thing," Mitsuku said, "anything that can help bring Kenta's killer to justice."

"Oh, and we're going to need a list of those people too, if you don't mind!" Inga said with a grin.

"Right, of course," Mitsuku nodded.

**They headed to the Old CEO's office and entered, surprised to find that Izumi Koyama and Mayoi Katawase had arrived as well.**

"Oh, I see you brought the midgets with you today," Izumi frowned at Inga.

"Who're you calling a midget?!" Inga protested with a huff.

"Easy there," Shinjuurou put a hand on the boy's head and turned his attention to Izumi. "Have you started searching the room yet?"

"No," Katawase said, "we only got here just before you did. We were trying to figure out what to search first."

"Well as they always say," Rie said with a grin, "six heads are better than two!"

"I don't think anyone has actually said that before you," Kazamori said quietly.

"She's got a point though," Katawase followed that comment with a characteristic "Hue Hue Hue!"

**And so they began to search, the moments passing away in silence as they each went to a different area of the room.**

Kazamori and Inga focused on the computer and desk that Kenta Otonoshi would have used day to day, the two Detectives searched through the bookshelf on the left side of the room, and the Police Chief and the Prossecutor searched the cabinets on the right side of the room.

It was a little while into the search that Rie found a ledger of business expenses. "Hey, Shinjuurou, what do you make of this?" She asked as she settled down on the floor to open the ledger up and page through it.

"Huh?" Shinjuurou then knelled down to lean over her shoulder to look as she paged through it. "Looks like a expense book..."

"Yeah, but it's the second one I found," Rie said, "and it's unmarked too..."

"And then there's the numbers...that doesn't add up even though it looks like it should..."

As they looked over that, Katawase elbowed Izumi in the arm with a grin on her face, "Hey, Izumi-chan, Izumi-chan!"

"What is it?" Izumi scowled, "And don't call me that, please."

"Don't those two look all close an' cuddly all'f'a sudden?" Katawase asked as she nodded in Shinjuurou and Rie's direction.

Izumi followed the Chief's directional cue, and observed the two. She'd never really paid attention before to people's emotional cues, but now that she was being forced to look... There was a distance between the two that seemed to have been filled. That could be trouble if Rinroku ever found out. "No, they don't."

"Aww, come on," Katawase protested, "you really don't see it? And they were all dressed up last night too...!"

Thankfully for Rie and Shinjuurou, who heard all of this thanks to the two officers talking louder than they thought they were, Inga spoke up just then, "FOUND SOMETHING!"

"It looks like all personal data related to a particular project was uploaded to a drop box cloud for ease of access," Kazamori explained. "Unfortunately, access to the local copy appears to be password encrypted on several levels. I cannot tell what is inside the contents of this drop box cloud beyond the name."

"And what name is that?" Rie asked.

"An alphanumerical string of letters and numbers: 'P, r, 0, V, z, n, L, underscore, 5, N, underscore, P, 1, 3.'" Kazamori repeated the string back.

"Hold on, I think I saw that in here..." Rie flipped back a few pages, and then Shinjuurou pointed at one.

"There. Project 'Provisonal Five-N, Pie'...Pi?" Shinjuurou frowned, "I don't think this is an accounting book at all... Look at that line there..." He pointed at a line.

"Oh..?" Rie's eyes widened. "OH!"

"What'cha got there, lovebirds?" Katawase asked of them, which made them jump slightly in surprise.

"Looks like an accounting book at first glance," Shinjuurou said after a second of recomposing himself, "but I think this might be a code book."

"I've got to agree on that, but I think it might be an accounting book hidden inside a code book too," Rie put the theory forward.

"I'll have Aranea-san take a look at it," Izumi said, "maybe she will find something in there will let us into that drop box."

"Sounds like a plan," Shinjuurou agreed with a glance at Kazamori. "Ah, I think we should get going soon. If we're going to make it to that appointment on time."

"Oh, you're right!" Rie nodded suddenly holding the book awkwardly as if trying to bookmark the current page before closing it, "Sorry to bail out on you, Izumi, Officer Katawase, we've got somewhere to be and not a lot of time to get there."

"Huh?" Inga blinked, "But it's not anywhere near lunch ti-" Kazamori elbowed him in the gut. "-EEEM! Ow..." Izumi raised an eyebrow at him. "Er...Um...Right! I guess it's later than I thought! I just got hungry all of a sudden!"

Katawase blinked, though her eyes could not be seen, "Huh?"

There was a thud, and the code/accounting book was placed on the ground. "Alright, we've got to get going," Rie said. "Later, Izumi-san!"

"Er, um..." Izumi stared out after them as the two detectives and their 'assistants' quickly left the room, heading to the elevator as quickly as they could.

"What the hell was that for, Kazamori?" Inga asked with a slight scowl.

"Not here," Shinjuurou said, "outside."

"You found something in that book, didn't you?" Inga asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Inga," Rie said as she discretely pulled out a folded sheet of paper from a pocket, and put it back in. "We've got that outstanding appointment with Steranko, remember?"

"It's half-way across town," Shinjuurou said, "not that far from Otonoshi's house, actually. The drive's going to be even longer from here than from Rie's place to there."

**They took the elevator down, and quickly exited the building.**

"So now that we're out of there, what did you guys find?" Inga asked.

"It was Kazamori's discovery of the drop box that tipped us off," Shinjuurou said, "and you found that right off the bat, didn't you?"

"His Email Inbox showed numerous space purchase upgrades for the drop box account," Kazamori said, "I copied everything to a flash drive just in case Rising Sun tampers with the original copies after today," and she held up a thumb drive.

"That drop box name was right over another listing," Rie explained as she held up the stolen page, "Steranko Security."

"There were a few other names on there we might want to investigate too," Shinjuurou said, "so we tore a page out when Izumi and Katawase weren't looking."

"So that was why Kazamori hit me," Inga scowled. "Not cool, Shinjuurou!"

"They needed a distraction," Kazamori said, "so I thought of one loud enough to cover the sound of tearing paper."

"Still though..." Inga grumbled, "you didn't have to hit me so hard..."

"Sorry," Kazamori apologized, with a surprising slightly pinkish tone coming over her cheeks, "it's harder to control strength when I can't adjust it as a numerical value."

Before the conversation could drift into that dark territory again, Shinjuurou voiced a question, "So what else did you find on the computer?"

"Nothing beyond the emails and the drop box," Kazamori said, "everything appeared to have been emptied out save for the receipt emails, most likely too important to delete permanently, and when I checked the system files, it appears that a hard system reformat was done within the last week. The drop box most likely contains all of the important information. A virtual desktop as it were."

"Yeah, the desk was just as empty as the computer," Inga said as he put his arms behind his head, "lots of fresh dust lines though. I think someone cleared it out last night. Also- was it just me, or did anyone else notice a disturbing lack of photographs in that office?"

"Now that you mention it," Rie said, "I don't remember seeing any paintings or photos at his house either."

"But that Mitsuku guy, he had a bunch of photos on his shelves and desk," Inga continued. "A lot of those were high school photos, too. I wonder if he was embarrassed about his past or something?"

"Maybe someone from his high school days when he worked on P Versus NP?" Shinjuurou wondered, "That could be how they knew he completed it. If the Rising Sun group _included_ Kenta Otonoshi, then this might not be a straight murder case at all."

"We could be going about it the wrong way, if that's the case," Rie noted as she scanned over the sheet of paper. "We'll have to check the yearbooks to see if any of these names match up with Kenta's old classmates."

"I say we split up for now," Shinjuurou said, "I'll take Inga with me to Steranko. Rie...?"

"I'll take Kazamori with me to the Library, we'll search online for the Yearbooks, and the school," Rie nodded. "If we can't find an online copy of the yearbooks, we'll have to search for a hard copy somewhere else."

"Wait," Inga began, "we're splitting up? Why?"

"So that way we can cover more ground." Shinjuurou said, "If the Rising Sun is using P Versus NP to easily hack into the world's websites, we're going to need to move quickly to search for everything before they cover their tracks."

"It sounds like a reasonable plan to me," Kazamori agreed.

"We'll meet up back at my place after we finish up," Shinjuurou decided. "I have a feeling it'll be off the radar after...well..." he trailed off.

"Right," Rie nodded, "plus, who knows if they haven't bugged my place by now. They did call my dad out on this, after all."

And so they went their separate ways.


	4. Receding Tide

**STERANKO SECURITY FIRM.**

It was an imposing sign, that was for sure.

"Fukashima-san will speak with you now," Said a Secretary, who looked suspiciously similar to the one at the last place they were at.

"Thank you," Shinjuurou said with a nod as he and Inga sat up from their chairs and headed to the door.

"Hello," The man at the desk said as he typed at a calculator, "just take a seat, I'll be with you in a moment..."

Shinjuurou and Inga did just that, and took the time to look around the room.

Unlike the dimly lit office of CEO Mitsuku Asahina, the office of Accountant Daigo Fukashima was brightly lit, and even higher up in terms of floor level.

The bookshelves all listed various popular titles from the last thirty years, some of which had even been web comics originally, only to be published in book format years later. Other shelves lacked books, and instead were filled with various nick-knacks and old fashioned photo frames featuring young children at various ages.

"Right, sorry about that," Fukashima said, looking up from his work with a smile. "I had some last minute numbers to run after an email just came in. I'm Fukashima, Daigo, Steranko's Japanese branch's Chief Accountant."

"It's fine," Shinjuurou said. "I'm Detective Yuki, Shinjuurou, this is my assistant, Inga. We're here about the murder of Otonoshi, Kenta."

"Ah, yes, the Numerical Security Advancements Firm CEO who was murdered last night," Fukashima sighed and took off his accounting glasses to rub at his nose. "Such a shame. He had seemed so lively last time we talked."

"You two were friends?" Inga asked.

"You could say that," Fukashima shrugged. "We were about as close as friends could be given our business arrangements. He would come to me for requests to upgrade his house's security, I would run the numbers through to see if we could squeeze such a project into our schedule, and if so, I'd approve the project."

"Your boss didn't have a problem with that?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Goodness no!" Fukashima chuckled slightly, "Kenta was the man who helped make the Steranko 5.0 System and beyond what they were after the war. I dare say that we might never have made it to next month's 8.8 release without his invaluable work. What's a few house renovation projects in contrast to the world's top notch security system?"

"Did he have any work on his house done recently?" Shinjuurou asked.

"He was always having work done but..." Fukashima put his glasses back on and went to his keyboard, tapping a few keys to bring up a folder. "Around the time that JJ System's Chairman was in the hospital, Kenta _did_ make an usual request."

"What kind of request?" Inga asked.

"To beta test our new nail-head cameras in his house, and to remove the old bulky security cameras," Fukashima said with a frown. "We said, 'sure, why not', but after last night's...ahhem...'show', well...You can see why the company has decided to put the nail-camera development on hold for the time being."

"Makes sense to me," Inga agreed.

"Otonoshi-san was working on P Versus NP," Shinjuurou asked next, "was any of that a piece of the Steranko System?"

"P Versus NP you say...?" Fukashima paled slightly, "Well, that is an interesting question. Kenta requested that we try a new software upgrade for his house cameras about...a week ago? But he ordered us to specifically not look into the code itself. Said that he was beta testing something on his own time... In light of how easily the secure data feed to our servers was hijacked and broadcast onto the web, I think it's safe to say that Kenta finished P Versus NP, alright. That was probably why Kenta was so happy when I talked to him last."

"What did he say?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Not much, I'm afraid," Fukashima said with a shrug. "Just that 'if this works, the world will be a better place'. I thought he was just being dramatic, but...then he also said that if he was right, 'Then the Light of the Rising Sun will shine down upon us all' and I don't think I need to tell you how ominous those words are after last night's..." he spun his hand around. "You know."

"So you think Kenta was a part of this Rising Sun group?" Inga asked.

"I think he was in contact with them," Fukashima shrugged, "but he might have just been being used by them, rather than intentionally working with them. You know how some of these shady deals go, sometimes."

"Yeah," Shinjuurou nodded.

"At any rate," Fukashima said, "Kenta told me that despite all of that, he was just happy that it would all 'soon be over,' and that the 'damage' he'd felt 'from the war would finally be able to heal'. He even said he was thinking of starting a family one day," He glanced over at a photograph of the children, "I feel sorry that he never got a chance to reach that place."

"You have kids?" Inga asked.

"Yes, two boys," Fukashima said as he stood up to go pick up the photo frame he'd been staring at. "They'll be five and thirteen in a few months. I'm just grateful that they were engrossed with a movie last night when the...the Web was taken over. They didn't need to see that sort of thing. They're too young for that." He turned to Shinjuurou and Inga, and met their eyes in turn with his. "Please, if there's anything you need to help stop this, don't hesitate to call my personal number."

"We will," Shinjuurou nodded.

"Let me go grab a business card," Fukashima said as he moved over to the desk, "it's got my number on it."

**As they stepped outside, Shinjuurou stopped by the Secretary.**

"Excuse me," He said, "do you happen to have a sister who works at the Numerical Security Advancements Firm by any chance?"

"Yes, I do!" The woman smiled briefly, "We both went to work at the same temp agency, ended up getting the same job types a few months apart from each other! I've been working here for five months, she's been working there for two! Funny how that works out, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Shinjuurou nodded, "that is pretty funny."

**They stepped into the elevator, already holding a few passengers in it.**

A security guard and a woman in a business suit.

Shinjuurou and Inga paid little attention to them, up until the point the Security Guard's radio beeped.

_**"Attention Guards, we've got the basket case from this morning trying to vandalize the vending machine again. Could someone come down to the lobby and throw her out?"** _

The Guard in the Elevator answered, "I'm on my way down as we speak. I'll take care of the little brat."

**METRO CITY PUBLIC LIBRARY**

It was rare that Rie found a Library to be disturbing, but the simple fact that The Rising Sun seemed to be able to do anything with P Versus NP was making her shiver.

"This online record's been wiped clean," The Librarian said with a scowl, "I don't know how that happened, but someone's bulk erased every trace of data on the historical yearbooks we collected."

"It's fine," Rie said with an apologetic smile, "I'll just have to find a hard copy."

"Yeah, well," The librarian ran a hand through his hair, "you're going to have a doozy of a time finding people's names in a hard copy. That's why we digitized it all. Man, I really pity the fool who's gotta go back and rewrite all of that by hand..." he sighed, "Knowing my luck it'll probably end up being me."

"Don't worry," Rie said as she patted him on the shoulder, "I'm sure it'll all work out eventually."

"Yeah, that's if I don't get fired first."

**Rie returned to the Computer array where she'd left Kazamori.**

"Any luck?"

"Unfortunately no." Kazamori said as she scrolled through the search results before her. "It appears that all online references to Otonoshi, Kenta's schooling records have been erased, and are being actively censored."

"Censored?" Rie frowned.

"I simultaneously posted a test question in the anonymous comments on multiple articles on Otonoshi, Kenta that recapped his life from birth to his recent death. I inquired why they made no mention of his schooling, and not moments after posting, my comment had been scrambled into a generic troll comment, retaining only it's original format for approximately three seconds before each page automatically refreshed."

"Geeze," Rie's frown deepened, "that's almost like the kind of scary speed my dad has on these things. Who has the resources to do something like that?"

"A single human could achieve this type of event within thirty seconds, but never simultaneously to the same second. A basic computer AI could pull something like that off at about five seconds if they were monitoring one site alone, and multiple AI's could pull off the synchronized deletions," Kazamori said. "An R.A.I., if any more existed at this point of time, could monitor multiple websites at once to pull off the speed at which I observed." She turned her head over her shoulder towards Rie, "But those are only if they are employed by those companies and had access to the website's security codes. With an advanced P Versus NP algorithm...? I cannot be certain what could cause this."

"We'll have to go check the school itself for a physical yearbook copy then," Rie said.

"Understood," Kazamori said before logging out of the computer and standing up.

**As they walked outside, Rie's cellphone rang.**

"Hello?" She answered.

 _"Hey, it's me,"_ Shinjuurou's voice came through over the muffled sounds of screaming and fighting on the other end. _"You're never going to guess who I just ran into."_

"Who?" Rie asked.

**Shinjuurou smirked as he observed the scene before him.**

"Just the niece of Kenta-san, causing a scene in Steranko Security's lobby."

"I SAID!" The brilliantly blood-red haired girl shouted as the Guards tried, and failed, to restrain her as she kicked at the Vending Machine. "LET ME THROUGH!"

It cracked heavily, and Inga winced at the sound as the girl took a deep breath.

" _ **I KNOW YOU KILLED MY UNCLE KENTA, YOU DAMN MACHINE!"**_

Rie raised an eyebrow, unaware of just what to make of that remark other than, "She sounds a little unhinged to me."

 _"Yeah, but she might know something,"_ Shinjuurou said. _"Inga and I are going to try approaching her, see if we can get her to calm down somewhat."_

"Well, good luck with that," Rie said, "try not to get killed."

 _"We'll try,"_ Shinjuurou said. _"So how did the library search go?"_

"Uneventful," Rie said, "I'll tell you more about it when we get back to your place, but for now we're going to go to the school itself to see if we can get a yearbook from them. If not, we'll have to ask Mitsuku if he has one..."

 _"Or if things work out on our end,"_ Shinjuurou offered an alternative, _"we might just be able to ask the niece here instead."_

"Sounds like a plan," Rie smiled.

 _"Be careful,"_ Shinjuurou said, _"ok?"_

"Will do," Rie nodded.

**And with that, she hung up and whistled for a Taxi.**

Not surprisingly, the search for the school turned out to be a dead end. The High School that Kenta Otonoshi had gone to was utterly gone. Like so many other buildings, it had been destroyed in the war.

Unlike other buildings, however...

This High school just quite simply didn't exist.

Rie and Kazamori stared at the fenced off, empty grass field before them, all around their surroundings were ruined buildings...But the square footage of where a school should be...?

Unlike the other buildings ruined in the war, this high school had been torn down, and relatively recently at that.

The grass was too neatly maintained- and was too thickly green to have been there during the war.

"Someone planted this grass over where the building should be..." Rie frowned. "Who the hell does something like this?"

**Meanwhile, in a fast food restaurant, Shinjuurou and Inga stared at the red haired girl across the table from them.**

"So...you're not cops?" She asked, blinking equally red eyes at them.

"We're detectives, technically," Shinjuurou said. "I'm guessing you're Kenta's niece?"

"Yes," she nodded, "I am. My name is...Alicia. Just call me Alicia for now."

"Alright then, Alicia," Shinjuurou said, "what was up with attacking the vending machine like that?"

"It's..." Alicia paused. "Complicated."

"We've got time," Inga said. "Explain."

"I'd rather not do it here," She glanced around at all the customers. "You never know who might be listening."

"...Alright then..." Shinjuurou frowned. "What are you willing to talk about then? Your Uncle Kenta then?"

"Um..." Alicia tapped a finger to her chin for a moment. "Sure, I guess."

"How well did you know him?" Inga asked.

"Well enough to feel like someone ran me over with a car when I found out he was dead," Alicia said.

"Interesting way of putting it," Shinjuurou noted.

"That's...putting it accurately, actually." Alicia scratched at her nose. "He had me working with him on a project, a formula called-"

"P Versus NP," Shinjuurou and Inga said simultaneously.

"Ah...So you've heard of it?" Alicia asked.

"That's putting it accurately," Shinjuurou quoted.

"Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised given that you've been investigating it..." Alicia began, "but...what do you know of what we were working on?"

"We suspect that...ah... _ **He**_ was working on solving it for the Rising Sun, and got killed when he completed it," Inga said under a whisper.

"We also think that his classmates from high school might have been involved in this," Shinjuurou added. "Why were you working on it with him?"

"I was ...ah...Testing my uncle's math to make sure it was sound," Alicia said with an avoiding glance, "I'd rather not say more than that right now though."

"You know," Shinjuurou said, "at this rate we might as well head back to my house to meet up with Rie and Kazamori. That way we can talk privately."

"That might be preferable," Alicia said.

**The Phone rang. And Rang...And then finally...**

_"This is Asahina, Mitsuku. How can I help you?"_

"Hi, this is Kaishou, Rie calling," Rie said.

 _"Oh, hello miss Kaishou. What can I do for you?"_ Mitsuku sounded unsure.

"I was wondering if you had a Class Yearbook from your high school days?" Rie asked. "We think it might help with the investigation."

_"Hm...Well...I think I might still have it...Wait. No. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I threw it out about a year ago. Sorry."_

"No, that's fine," Rie shook her head, "Thank you for your time." And with that, she hung up.

Just in time for it to ring with the sound of an incoming text.

 _"Rie- Inga and I are heading back to my place. Meet us there if you've got something. Walls are Listening. "_ And that was all Shinjuurou said on the matter.

"...Walls are Listening?" Rie raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?" She texted back that question.

Moments later, a reply came in. _"K's Niece won't let us talk in public. "_

"...Ah," Rie nodded in understanding, and texted back, "We're on our way."

**One of the benefits of having a home in the bombed parts of the city, Rie observed, was that Shinjuurou would be able to get out into the ruined parts of the city and hide quickly should the need arise.**

The reason this thought came up was a simple one as Kazamori opened the door to the apartment.

The Toaster had leaped at them with a high pitched yowl more befitting of a cat.

For a single moment, Kazamori and Rie stared at the hissing appliance that had landed between them and observed it. It was quite clearly the two slotted toaster, however having undergone some bizarre transformation.

For one thing- it's electrical plug and cord was whipping about like a tail, and the handle on the front had morphed out into a neck and seemed to have bulged out impossibly into a mockery of a cat's head, complete with mouth.

And the legs? The four short stubby plastic stoppers had mutated out into working legs.

Yes, it appeared that the apartment's toaster had come to life, and furthermore, had transformed into the very creature it was now acting like.

"A-A-" Kazamori's eyes went wide with fear as a familiar panic started to overcome her, "ATTACK OF THE APPLIANCES!" She screamed and then turned tail to run away- towards the stairwell on the opposite side of the building.

Rie could only watch with a bemused, confused, and horrified expression as the Cat-Toaster began springing after her, launching its payload of toast from the two slots after the poor girl.

 _ **"AAAHH!"**_ Kazamori screamed as the toast sailed over her head- unfortunately tripping on her own two feet and falling to the ground, allowing the Cat-Toaster to get closer and closer with it's progressively larger leaps before-

_**SLAM!** _

-A concerned neighbor, who Rie never even expected to be living in this building threw open his door right in the rogue machine's path- stopping it just shy of it's downward arc onto Kazamori.

"What the hell is going on out here!?" The neighbor shouted.

"C-Ca-T-t-TOASTER!" Kazamori could only point at the door and stutter almost incoherently.

The neighbor stepped outside and pulled his door closed a bit to look at what hit it...

"What in the world...?"

The poor Cat Toaster was lying on the ground, limbs spazamming at weird angles as its tail let off sparks of electricity.

**It was with a hesitant manner that Rie entered the apartment, brandishing a borrowed frying pan from the neighbor as she searched each room for signs of any renegade appliances.**

It was quite obvious, in retrospect due to the Phone and Disk Players earlier freak out, that the light blast from that morning had caused some sort of mechanical-organic matter conversion among the house's appliances.

Kazamori was the prime example of it, being an RAI now made fully human, but to think that such a transformation could have affected everything else in the apartment...? Rie realized rather belatedly that they should have done more investigating of the apartment before heading out. There was no telling what was going wrong.

The poor phone definitely was dead, so that was one less concern to worry about, but more worryingly, the Disk Player was missing. It had probably come to life like the toaster had, but what transformation it had undergone was unknown.

Rie rounded the corner into the kitchen and swung her frying pan down as she entered with a cry of "HAAAH!"

The Refrigerator mooed at her in return.

Rie stared at it in confusion and repeated, in a more confused tone, "haaah?" _'Great, now what do I tell Shinjuurou? His fridge is a cow now? ...Actually, I wonder if the water dispenser gives milk now...?'_ She quickly shook her head to remove the thought, and began searching the kitchen for other changes.

There was the Microwave, perched up on the shelf over the oven, flapping two wings like a bird. And the oven...? Thankfully, that one seemed unchanged by the transformations due to being a gas powered device rather than an electronic one.

Nothing else in the kitchen seemed to be different, though, Rie noted with relief. So with that, she turned around and prepared to exit the kitchen.

It was then that she saw the roaring bristle heads of the vacuum cleaner's main floor attachment rearing up as if to strike on its own. Rie's eyes widened and she quickly held up the frying pan to block as the rampaging vacuum's engine roared to life with a might hiss as it shot forward like a mighty python.

**KLANG!**

Kazamori flinched slightly as she heard the mighty reverberating echo of steel against plastic from outside the apartment.

She hated the fact that she'd frozen up like that. She never would have paniced at the sight of a moving Toaster before when she had used to be an R.A.I., and in fact, she hadn't even been a she to begin with. It was strange how the mind was the plaything of the body at times, and Kazamori wasn't sure how to handle that sudden change.

R.A.I.'s had been made with the intent to replicate human thought almost flawlessly, but apparently replacing circuits and controlled motions with actual blood and muscles proved that R.A.I.'s weren't as 'flawless' as her Father had thought.

If that man hadn't been arrested, and Kazamori's previous identity, the President of the Sasa Company, hadn't been written off as deceased, she would have considered confronting him on it and showing that he hadn't been as thorough in his programming as he'd thought he'd been.

Still, from a scientific standpoint, the phenomenon that had resulted from the previous night's experiment on Inga's powers had created some rather interesting after effects.

The Cat-Toaster, for example.

Kazamori glanced across the hallway to where the neighbor who had slammed the animated object with his front door was presently keeping a solid eye on the Cat-Toaster that had since calmed down from it's spazamming, and now seemed more confused than anything as to what was happening.

Certainly, it wasn't as aggressive as it had been before.

And then that brought Kazamori's thoughts over to her own panic attacks.

The first had been that morning, right after what Shinjuurou and Rie had described as "A wave of light." Kazamori had felt her body _change_ in an instant. While it was a feeling similar to when she transported herself from the _**Toy Doll**_ to her _**Female Human**_ body, there had been a disturbing addition- The sudden loss of input from the outside world.

As an R.A.I., wire-less-ly transferring from one body to another always required a connection to the global internet. Indeed, for all of Kazamori's life, she'd had that omnipresent connection to the world wide web itching at the back of her head. If she ever needed to look up a fact or a website, she could 'zone out' and upload herself onto the Internet for a brief search. That power had even allowed her to locate Shinjuurou when he had been brainwashed by Bettenou into believing he was a camera operator. It could even be said that as an R.A.I., a piece of her very 'soul' was _always_ inside the vast data network of the world.

But then, in an instant, that constant itching had been pulled away.

It had felt like a piece of herself had just suddenly ceased to exist.

That had been the leading cause of the resulting panic, Kazamori decided, to the point that she'd barely even noticed the other thing that had resulted from the change.

She no-longer could control her body in terms of mechanical motions. Long gone were the motions of "Vocalize Words" and "Move Arm By X, Y, Z, Degrees." As an R.A.I., she was not meant to think in these terms explicitly, or even consciously, but at times she had found that when she needed to do something with a delicate precision, such thoughts were a way to distance herself from her body and use it more as a tool to pull off those required, precise motions.

Kazamori frowned as another loud sound came from inside the apartment, along with Rie's triumphant shout of: "AND THAT'S FOR TRYING TO EAT MY JACKET!", and she had to wonder, what exactly were these formerly non-sentient machines even thinking as they acted out the first acts of their newly given life?

Perhaps they too were experiencing such panic attacks, and needed to find a way to adjust to the conflicting set of...Memories?

The Cat-Toaster seemed to be happy to act as a simple domesticated house cat for the moment, purring and mewling against the confused neighbor's leg.

"Er...So..." He said, "what exactly is this thing?"

"I do believe that it is a cat," Kazamori said simply.

"Yeah, I got that, but..." The man looked at the confusing creature in confusion, "why is it a _toaster!?"_

"...Why is what a toaster?" Said a girl with red hair as she approached, at the wrong angle to see the cat-toaster.

Kazamori nearly did a double take as Inga and Shinjuurou came walking up just a second later.

"That's what I'd like to know," Shinjuurou frowned, "and why are you waiting outside for?"

Kazamori wasn't sure how to process that inquiry.

Why *was* she waiting outside?

The answer, she suspected, lay in the second panic attack. The sight of a Toaster come to life? It vaguely reminded her of the movie that she and Inga had been watching before they'd lost interest and-

A flush came up onto her cheeks, and before she could even fight to suppress it, Inga noticed the Toaster Cat a whole split-second after Shinjuurou had voiced his question.

"Oh wow! It's our toaster!"

"Wait what?" Shinjuurou glanced down at the ground as Inga knelled down to meet the Cat-Toaster at eye level.

"That would be why we're outside," The neighbor said, "the damn thing tried to attack that young girl there, and she freaked out. If I hadn't heard her and thrown my door open when I did, who knows what this thing would've done."

"It seems really calm now," Shinjuurou observed as Inga picked the Toaster-Cat up and held it in his arms with a grin on his face.

"I think it was the knock on the head that did it," The neighbor pointed at his door- which had a sizable dent on the exterior side. "I dunno what the hell happened, but I've never seen anything put a dent into metal like that and walk away."

"Can we keep it, Shinjuurou?" Inga asked as he scratched at one of the Toaster-Cat's 'ears'.

"Well it _is_ our toaster," Shinjuurou said. "It's not like we're giving it up or anything."

And then Rie came out of the apartment door, holding a twisted and battered frying pan in hand, clothes and hair disheveled, and a wide grin with a laugh on her face. "Oh hey, Shinjuurou! Your Fridge is a milk giving cow now, by the way!" She walked over to the neighbor and handed him back the frying pan. "Thanks for letting me borrow this, Yushima-san!"

The man's eyes went wide at the present state of his frying pan, and he groaned, "My wife is gonna kill me for this."

"Nah!" Rie said with a grin, "Tell her it went to a good cause!" She then frowned slightly as she turned to Shinjuurou and said, "Also, I think I'm going to have to buy you a new vacuum cleaner."

"...Why do I get the feeling that I've just missed some important case development?" Shinjuurou asked.

**"My name is Ruecia Alicia Ilucia Otonoshi, but you can continue to call me Alicia," Alicia introduced herself. "Kenta Otonoshi is my uncle on my father's side."**

"So what was with the vending machine?" Inga asked, "I'm really curious to know!"

"That would be quite simple," Alicia said with a smile, "that vending machine shorted me ten dollars the first time I used it, and we've been arguing about whom owes whom what for the last three months."

"...Excuse me?" Rie asked. "How can you be arguing with a vending machine?"

"The answer lies with the fact that I am not One hundred percent human," Alicia said simply- coldly- flatly- and lifted up her shirt to reveal that a large portion of the skin over her chest and stomach was missing.

"You're an R.A.I.," Kazamori said upon recognizing the metal chassis that her own body had been made out of a day earlier.

"Technically, I'm a living human whose brain scan was transplanted into an R.A.I. chassis," Alicia said as she lowered her shirt down. "My father and I were in a car accident shortly after the R.A.I.'s initial run of popularity began, around seven years ago. Where some saw nothing but sex toys or military weapons, my uncle saw a way to save lives."

"So that's why the guards had a hard time holding you back," Shinjuurou deduced. "Your strength went well beyond theirs."

"Indeed," Alicia nodded, even smiling at the toaster cat as it came to curl up on her lap despite the tone the conversation had taken. "When Uncle Kenta saw that I shared the same initials as the R.A.I. system, he thought it a sign, and bought several chassis to customize them in such a way to replicate my original body at various stages of my future growth, so that I might be able to use them to continue to grow up and continue my life. My father had died instantly in the crash, and so my mother, grief stricken, wanted to find a way to keep me alive, even if my organic body died entirely. To make a long story short, the brain scan finished off my organic body, but allowed me to survive as an R.A.I., although it was in secret."

"So when the R.A.I.'s went under public scrutiny, your family kept quiet about the potential medical uses?" Rie asked.

"My mother was afraid that the Government would take me away, confiscated like the other R.A.I.'s." Alicia sighed, "I was kept out of the public light in order that I could have a normal life. But...My mother died around the time the war ended but before Uncle Kenta could return and perform a brain scan on her like he had done for me. It was a genetic disease that I too would have died from eventually had I not been saved by Uncle Kenta...But my uncle...He was devastated by her death, and he grew disillusioned with the world, continually blaming himself for not being able to help her. He stopped seeing me less as a person and more as a tool."

"So when you said earlier that Kenta had you checking his math on P Versus NP," Shinjuurou said, "that was because you have a computer processor for a brain, right?"

"I was his bench test for all P Versus NP codes," Alicia explained. "If I could use the codes while...distanced from my body, using it as I would a computer instead of as my body, then his coding worked and he could have a chance to put all of this behind him."

"Did it work?" Inga asked.

"Not that I was ever told, but given what I can find online that was recorded of last night..." Alicia trailed off, and changed subjects. "Uncle Kenta gained a...clarity about him the last few weeks. He stopped treating me as a tool and more like his niece. He said that he was close to finishing P Versus NP and that once he was done with that, we could become a family again. He stopped having me test the Programs and... We even took a picture last Sunday..." She smiled slightly as synthetic tears formed from her eyes, though the emotions felt were genuine, "I think he must have known what was coming, somehow. He uploaded the picture straight to my hard drive. And...I..." She sniffed, and then hurriedly wiped the tears away. "Sorry, I try not to do that as I am, broken wiring in my chest. I haven't had a chance to repair myself after last night, and I don't want to short circuit anything with the tears."

"Were you there when your Uncle was killed?" Rie asked.

"Yes, I believe," Alicia nodded. "I was cooking him dinner when I heard him make a call to someone. A few minutes later, there was a crash from outside. Kenta thought that maybe one of our neighbors had come home drunk again, so I went out to investigate, but then the next thing I knew, I'd been hit by this dark blue van, and my chassis went into a reboot cycle."

"So why did you think someone at Steranko killed your Uncle?" Shinjuurou asked.

"When I woke up," Alicia explained, "I was in a dumpster just across the street from the Steranko office, around midnight. I'd gone in there repeatedly since that time to try to ask the Vending Machine what happened...But he was being especially stubborn and kept telling me off in a way that made me sure that he knew something and was trying to keep me away. Even called security on me for kicking him even though I hadn't gone anywhere near him." She glanced down at the Toaster Cat, "I know it's hard to think of it this way, but creatures such as this cat...most technological devices of the modern age have some semblance of an A.I. on them, cheap imitations of R.A.I.'s, but it's cheaper to mass produce them and use them for various different machines rather than going to the trouble of writing new code for a things like microwaves and toasters. It's...It's also why the completed P Versus NP is the most dangerous tool of all."

"All those mass produced A.I.'s use the same code, don't they?" Rie asked. "It makes hacking into the code base easier than it should be. Like what you said earlier, Kazamori," Rie lookd to the girl. "A bunch of simple A.I.'s with modified tools."

"Why create one program to do all of that when you can just ask the existing programs to do your work for you," Kazamori said with a slight nod. "That would explain the speed. It was synchronized due to the programs acting independently...but that still doesn't explain the speed at which it happened."

"It could be that this new program speeds the A.I.'s up, right?" Inga asked.

"And it boosts their intelligence as well," Alicia said. "I think that's why my uncle stopped including me in the tests. He didn't want to risk harming me with his new programming, since I wasn't born as an AI." She picked up the Toaster Cat from her lap and held it out in front of her, and met it's virtual eyes with her own virtual ones despite not having it's head pointed at her. "This little one is but a simple one, unaffected by the wireless P Versus NP distribution." She put the cat back on her lap and pointed at the dead vacuum cleaner on the floor. "That one, though dead, I can tell that it was not modified by the program either. Though how it, and this little one became animate, I cannot say. That should be beyond the power and reach of any computer program."

Inga laughed nervously, "Yeah...that's kind of weird...isn't it...?"

"Anyways," Rie coughed politely. "I have a question for you, Alicia-san. More of a request actually..."

"Sure," The red haired girl nodded. "Ask away."

"Did your Uncle upload a copy of his High school yearbook into your memory by any chance?"

"Um...Yes, he did, actually. I thought it quite odd," Alicia said with a confused frown. "He password locked it, however, and I cannot access it personally."

"Do you think you could copy it to a computer or a flash drive for us?" Rie asked.

"...Possibly. Why do you ask?" Alicia asked.

"We think it might contain a lead on who Kenta was working with, and who might have killed him for his P Versus NP work," Shinjuurou answered.

"...That might very well be the case," Alicia said as her eyes widened slightly. "That he planned for a betrayal might very well have been a possibility. He was always very cautious of these sorts of things, especially given my own history..."

"A lot of people just called him paranoid," Inga remarked, "but I guess he was properly paranoid if it's going to help us solve his own murder."

"Do you have a clean computer somewhere that I can borrow?" Alicia asked.

"I'll go check," Shinjuurou said, and got up.

**And so several hours would pass as they discovered the computers in the household had also been affected by the transmutation wave; meaning that a new laptop needed to be purchased, set up, and configured without a wireless connection so that they could copy the yearbook file onto the computer and password break it.**

And they finally did by using one of the items listed on that stolen sheet of paper- "154NN4 K."

"Alright!" Rie said with a roll of her neck and a glance at the clock- 5:05 P.M. The sun would be setting soon. "Let's see what we've got here!"

"Looks like the usual suspects, school jock, cheerleaders," Shinjuurou listed the classmates off as Rie scrolled down the page, "Kenta and his friends sound pretty computer-club-ish, so they should be in that section of it of anything."

"Ah, there's Asahina," Inga pointed out a smiling face, "wow! Who would've guessed he was double timing on the chess and the soccer teams?"

"Wait..." Shinjuurou pointed at a spot on a page on the screen. "Isn't that...?"

**Aranea yawned as she watched the green text scroll by on the screen before her.**

Password breaking the dropbox folder was going to take some time, and had done so from the get go.

With a stretch and a pop, Aranea relaxed her shoulders into Kenta's leather chair- primarily made for long sessions of computer work like this.

And then there was a knock at the office door- and a creak as it opened.

"Huh?" Aranea looked up, smiling slightly, "Oh, hello again."

**"Kanzaki, Aria?"**

"AKA Serket, Aranea." Shinjuurou narrowed his eyes, "She was a part of Kenta's P Versus NP group along with Asahina."

"But she's not the girl from the one photo I saw in Asahina's office," Inga said, and pointed to a name a few rows down. "She was though!"

"What the hell?" Rie asked in surprise, "How come she didn't tell us that she knew Kenta?"

"I don't know," Shinjuurou frowned as he pulled out his cellphone and selected a number off of contacts, "but I've got a bad feeling about this..."

**"This is Mayoi Katawase, Police Chief, how can I help you?"**

_"Where's Aranea-san?"_ Shinjuurou asked suddenly.

"Huh, Yuuki-san?" Katawase frowned. "She's at Kenta's office breaking into the drop box. Why?"

_"Get her out of there NOW."_

**"Excuse me?" Aranea said with a concerned frown, "I think you must have me mistaken with someone else. My name's Aranea, not Aria."**

"No mistake," Mitsuku Asahina said as he entered the room, "I never forget faces, especially not pretty ones like yours."

"Now look here, I'm-" Aranea was cut off as a gun was raised from behind Mitsuku's back and pointed at her with a click. "WOAH!" She raised her hands. "Okay! Okay!"

"Please," the man smiled sadly, "I know I may look different from what you may remember, but you do know me, Aria-chan."

Aranea's eyes widened, "...Mitsuku?"

"Come now, Aria-chan, you can drop the act. You knew I worked here from the get go." Mitsuku snarled slightly, "Kenta-san mentioned it to you. He told me that himself."

"I haven't talked to Kenta in-" Aranea stopped when the gun went off and a hole was added to the computer monitor.

"Stop Acting!" Mitsuku growled. "There's nobody who can hear you! The cameras all have had their audio muted for this recording."

"Well maybe I'm just method acting," Aranea said with a frown, "you _**did**_ just shoot the computer monitor, after all."

"You always were one for theatrics, Aria," Mitsuku motioned the gun upwards, "stand up, and back out of the chair, then unhook the computer tower."

"Let me guess," Aranea gulped, "we're going for a walk?"

**It was but twenty minutes later that Katawase and a small squad of officers entered the office to find the shot up computer monitor, and a lack of any computer nor computer hacker.**

"Damn it," Katawase swore, and brought up her phone to dial a number. "Yo, Detective. We're too late. She's gone, and so is the computer."


	5. Speed Chess

An Osada had not been looking forward to the day she saw or heard from Shinjuurou Yuuki again. He and a single child were the only ones who would openly admit the truth that she had killed her own mother, Hisako Osada. The police would never arrest her for the murder, instead pinning the blame on an innocent man.

Though, in the end, Shinjuurou had granted her wish of getting her voice out into the world, An knew that when she heard from the detective next that her life would be thrown into chaos, and what 'normalcy' could come from that avoided arrest would disappear.

In retrospect, that the Great Detective had called her phone number out of any other he might have had at his disposal was of a peculiar oddity that An would never truly understand, and always would make her believe that her cold cutting, opening remark was the only proper response for what little she knew at the time:

"What do you want?"

 _"I need to borrow your mansion as a safe house for a little while,"_ was all she would get in response. _"I'll consider us even if you do this for me."_

"Even?" An had no clue what that even meant. She'd paid him fully for the investigation into herself, even though, on the surface of things, it appeared that the Defeated Detective had failed yet again. If he was referring to some sort of meta-debt that came from him knowing that she had murdered her own mother, then...in that case, An had no doubts that there was nothing she could do that would be able to pay it or make it 'even.'

Even so...

"Alright," she said, "I'll do it."

 _"Good,"_ he said, _"I'm sending Inga along as escort. You remember him, right? Goofy kid with the panda hat?"_

There was an off-phone shout of _"Hey!"_ from Inga at that remark.

"Yes, I remember him," An nodded, though it couldn't be seen over the phone. That would be the kid who knew about it all.

_"Right, he'll be bringing two other girls with him. Kazamori, one of them, works with us, by the way. The other girl, Alicia, she's the one who we need to keep hidden away."_

"I see," So one girl worked with them then, and so probably knew about the murder.

_"I'm trusting your judgement on security here. I don't want anyone coming in or getting out until I come to pick them up."_

"I'm surprised you're willing to trust me on this," An said.

 _"You're the first one who came to mind that I can trust on this,"_ Shinjuurou said, _"and you know what they say."_

"No, what?"

_**"Your first instinct is usually the right one."** _

Shinjuurou hung up and shoved the phone into his pocket as the taxi cab came to a stop outside of the N.S.A. Firm building. "Alright," he said to the Taxi Driver as he pulled out his wallet, "how much will it take you to get to the Osada Mansion from here?"

"Eh...About five'undred?" The Taxi Driver shrugged. "Depends on traffic."

Shinjuurou grumbled and got a thousand yen out, "Here's a thousand to take the three kids to the Osada Mansion, and keep the change."

**"Pleasure doin' business wit'ya!" The Driver's eyes had dollar signs in them as Shinjuurou and Rie got out and headed into the building.**

Chief Katawase was waiting for them, "About bloody time you two got here!" She chastised the duo.

"Sorry, we ran into traffic," Shinjuurou apologized. "What's the situation?"

"We've got a stolen computer with a shot up monitor and a potential _second_ murder on our hands," Katawase said with a scowl as she lead them to the elevator. "What do you _**THINK**_ the situation is?"

"No need to be snappy now," Rie said as the door closed, and the elevator took them upwards to the floor that housed the security office.

"Look, I've got a lot on my shoulders. After Hayami...you know...and I got promoted?" The chief sighed. "This is my first major case as a chief, alright? I didn't expect it'd be this hard this soon. We've only dealt with petty disturbances so far, since I started...It's a completely different feeling being in charge of an investigation as opposed to being just another cog in the machine."

"The first one is usually the worst," Shinjuurou said. "You don't even want to know what my first case was about."

"Try me," Katawase said sourly.

"A friend of mine stole my original identity and committed a murder under it, which eventually forced events to lead to his death- my death, according to the news," Shinjuurou said calmly, which had Rie blink in confusion and Katawase whistle lowly.

"Yeah, now that's something I hope this doesn't lead into," The Chief said.

"Well, if this case forces you to change your name," Shinjuurou said, "it's not the worst thing in the world. If anything, I can honestly say that that was the day my life truly began."

Any remarks to that comment were put on hold as the elevator arrived and the doors opened with a ding, revealing a bustling group of police officers that had to be waded through before they arrived at the security office.

"We're using this as Ground Base right now," Katawase explained as they walked through the mess. "We've got an active crime scene on the floor below us, and we're expecting another mass website hack any minute now."

"So we're going into round two then?" Rie asked.

"Pretty much," Katwase confirmed, then called out as they entered the darkened, and surprisingly empty security room, "Yo, Izumi!"

"Yeah, whatever!" Izumi said quickly in return as she motion them over to the one monitor she was using to review the tapes. "Come look at this."

It was a replay of the footage from Aranea's kidnapping from Kenta's office.

"That's Asahina," Rie deduced instantly upon seeing the face of the kidnapper.

"He muted the cameras before entering, but didn't outright disable them until they hit the elevators," Izumi explained, "we think he recorded this for the express purposes of uploading to the web."

"That makes sense," Katawase said, "but why not go live with it from the get go?"

"Because that wouldn't fit the scenario Rising Sun's written for us," Rie answered. "They're probably going to go into a live ransom demand after they play this footage. Why else kidnap Aranea instead of killing her outright?"

"Or she wasn't really kidnapped at all," Shinjuurou offered.

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Katawase asked. "She was pulled out of there at gun point!"

"Yes, but the audio was muted," Shinjuurou said as he observed Aranea stand up at Mitsuku's behest. "Who's to say they aren't acting out a kidnapping while talking about what to order for dinner at their base?"

"That's possible, I suppose..." Katawase frowned. "Wait. What?"

"Why would Aranea-san be working with them?" Izumi asked, frowning at Shinjuurou's insinuation.

"Because she's not Aranea Serket," Rie said, "her real name is Kanzaki, Aria, and she went to high school with Kenta-san."

"She did what?" Katawase shouted in surprise, "Why the hell didn't she tell us!?"

"I seriously doubt that Aranea has a false identity," Izumi said, "we ran a background check. Nothing came up on her-"

"But isn't it your department's specialty to create new family records?" Shinjuurou asked a rather pointed question. "You remember my first case, don't you, Izumi-san?"

The woman scowled, "Yes, but still, that's something completely different from what we did. How did you even come up with such an outlandish conspiracy theory anyways?"

"We found a copy of Kenta's High school yearbook," Shinjuurou said, "and given that, I don't think it's too far out of bounds to reach the conclusion that Aranea, or Aria, used a similar method to your own create a false identity. Perhaps it even came about as a result of Rinroku's meddling?" Shinjuurou said, "That could be why he was called out as 'the compulsive liar' at the start of all of this."

"Rie, surely you're not going to let him say that-" Izumi turned to Rie, but stopped when she saw the look on the girl's face.

"My dad's done some horrible things over the last few years, more so even recently. I wouldn't put it past him to have done something that's come back to bite him in the ass." Rie then added, "Besides, there's the missing school to think about."

"Missing school?" Katawase asked.

"The High school that Kenta, Aria, and Mitsuku all went to is gone," Rie repeated the information for the police chief. "The entire building was leveled and replaced with a grass field."

"Who else but Kaishou, Rinroku to do something like that?" Shinjuurou asked. "Who could have the resources to pull it off when everything else around it was left untouched?"

Any response to that was cut off by a man running into the room just then, "It's started!"

**The World's attention turned to the Rising Sun as their website overtook everything once more...**

The Blood Red background had been replaced by a black and white checkerboard- and the security footage from the earlier kidnapping played before everyone, with an edited in "Previously Recorded" in the top right corner of the footage.

And then, it cut to a "LIVE!" feed of Aranea's face as she read something pre-scripted, for it had been translated via subtitles for whichever region it was being viewed in, aloud.

"My name is Ara..Aria Kanzaki...and I am hidden somewhere high above the city."

The footage view would show five hanging wooden crates, each suspended in the air over various city intersections by large ropes that looked like their weight bearing limit was being stressed to the maximum.

"Inside one of these crates is the hard drive I was forced to remove. Inside each of them is a...a piece of me." the footage cut back to her- only to reveal that her arms and legs had been cut off, and capped off with rather ugly looking metal tubes. "T...There is also a bomb."

At that- a Timer appeared on the website- directly under the video.

"If I am not found before I either bleed out into this machine, the timer reaches zero, or the last crate has dropped to the street below...the bomb will detonate..." She was crying from the pain. "Please...someone...help me...!"

And so the feed cut out- instead focusing on the five wooden crates while the timer counted down silently.

**Rie excused herself for a moment to find a bathroom.**

"W...What kind of messed up people are these guys?" Katawase asked after a moment of silence.

"The kind that like cutting people's limbs off," Izumi answered as she clenched her fists.

Shinjuurou remained silent, even as the rest of the police officers in the room protested the treatment of the woman they had called a friend. His eyes narrowed down on the five different locations, and began trying to match street shapes from above with what he knew they looked like from below.

The conditions needed to be met exactly- find her before she bled out or the timer reached zero.

But what was that about the last crate...? Did that mean that they were going to fall?

That added an increased risk.

Too many variables.

"There-" He pointed at one crate, "that's over the intersection of Eighth and Kabuto. You can see the freeway in the corner."

"Get someone over there right now!" Katawase shouted.

Sinjuurou looked at the four remaining streets, and quickly started to identify them as fast as he could.

Then he identified one that would be the closest to the building they were currently in, and the most likely candidate for Aranea and the computer's true location.

Rie had come back by then, a good three minutes of solid thinking later.

And so, with officers dispatched to the other four locations, Shinjuurou headed for that location with Rie and Katawase in tow- Izumi opting to stay behind to monitor the website and call them to inform them of any developments.

**The First crate dropped four minutes thirteen seconds into the count down.**

It fell and fell and fell- and then- Four minutes thirty-one seconds into the count down- it impacted the intersection and shattered- sending wood, computer parts, and a left arm flying out into the street.

Traffic swerved out of the way of the sudden intrusion...

But the remains of the computer were destroyed by the cars driving through the intersection.

**Shinjuurou swore as he heard the news, and hung up his phone.**

"So the crates _are_ dropping," Katawase grumbled as she lead them out to the street where her car waited for them.

"Apparently that was the one with the left arm in it," Shinjuurou said.

"The others probably won't drop just yet," Rie offered, "that was probably just to prove that the crates _will_ drop."

**They got into the car and Katawase began driving to the nearest crate location. Seven minutes, fourteen seconds into the count down, the second crate fell.**

A driver screamed in horror as the left leg flew from the smashed open crate and hit their windshield.

They swerved- and crossed into opposing traffic.

The six car pile up was fortunate enough to have had no fatalities.

**The police cruiser arrived a few seconds after all of that had happened, and the three of them emptied out.**

"There it is!" Shinjuurou pointed up at the barely visible crate against the dimming night sky.

"How are we getting up there though?" Rie asked.

"Just let me flash my badge," Katawase said with a growl, and with that, they ran towards the shortest of the four corner buildings that the crate was suspended from.

**Simultaneously, Cruisers and Police arrived at the scenes of the other crates, and began closing the street off so that they could begin ascending the buildings and reaching the crate before it could fall.**

They began ascending the floors- and climbing to the roofs via elevator if the buildings had them, and if they didn't, they ascended by stairwell.

**The third crate's ropes snapped- and the crate fell down to the street below. This happened at the point that our two detectives and the police chief reached the mid point of the small building's height via elevator. It was the right leg.**

"Damn it!" Katawase swore upon hearing the news, "Hurry up you piece of junk!"

**Higher and higher, higher and higher...!**

The police broke onto the roof tops of the fourth crate's suspensions, and began working towards winching in the crate from the one side.

**The rope began to fray...**

Rie was the first one on the rooftop, running towards the fifth crate's rope winch, Shinjuurou was but a few feet behind her.

"Reel it in!" Someone shouted, and nobody cared who.

The trio worked quickly...

**The rope snapped- and the fourth crate began to swing downwards towards the city streets below...**

With a mighty smash- wood and metal went flying- and the right arm broke against the pavement with a bloody crack.

**But the fifth crate had been rescued.**

With a mighty smack from the end of Katawase's gun, the front of the crate fell open, revealing a computer tower and...

A decapitated, limbless, male torso, all blood drained from it.

"...Where's the head?" Katawase asked.

"What I want to know is why it's a guy's body and not a girl's," Shinjuurou frowned.

Rie just ran to the edge of the rooftop to throw up onto the street below.

**"What do you mean it's not Aranea?" Izumi shouted into the phone.**

_"It's exactly what I said,"_ Katawase answered, _"it's a male torso, Mister Asahina if I had to guess, that or some unknown john doe. ...So Unless Aranea was wearin' fake boobs the entire time..."_

"Don't even joke about that right now," Izumi said sourly.

_"Sorry sorry!"_

"What about the computer?" Izumi asked as she glanced to the count down- still running.

 _"It's the wrong model for the office. Shinjuurou seems to think we were intentionally being misdirected."_ Katawase answered.

"Where is he anyways?" Izumi asked.

 _"Rie threw up over the edge of the building, he took her down to the nearest restroom to get the rest outta her."_ Katawase chuckled, _"I tell ya, Izumi! Those two are fuckin' each other!"_

"Watch the language when we're on duty, Mayoi," Izumi scolded, "we've got two murders to investigate now."

 _"And a rogue bomb on the loose,"_ Katawase added. _"I think if anyone has it, it'll be Serket."_

"Why are you believing the theories of that man for?" Izumi asked, frowning in a concerned way.

 _"It makes sense, Izumi-chan, that's why!"_ Katawase said, _"She was prominently in the footage, we were made to think it was her in those crates, and even *IF* it's not Mitsuku Asahina we've got here, then it doesn't make any sense for it to not be her."_

_**"She could still be out there somewhere in the city,"** _ **Izumi said.**

"Yeah but," Katawase paused, "...c'mon, Izumi-chan. I know you were shaken up by Hayami-baka's betrayal, and you don't want Aranea to turn out to be just like that...but you've gotta face the facts here. Aranea Serket's suspect number one right now, and we can't-" the pause in speech was undetectable as a thought suddenly occurred to her- "go letting our emotions get the best of us."

 _"I guess you're right..."_ Izumi began.

"Yeah, Aren't I always?" Katawase then glanced over to the rooftop door, empty and motionless. "I'm gonna go check on Rie-chan. See if she's okay."

 _"Alright, I'll let you know if there are any changes to the website,"_ Izumi said.

And with that, Katawase hung up and went for the door.

**Shinjuurou went to the bathroom door when a knock came suddenly.**

"Rie's a bit better now," He began when he saw that it was Katawase on the other side. "She's just...had a long day-"

"Yeah okay that's great-" Katawase cut him off. "Look, I just had a brain wave."

"Yeah?" Shinjuurou asked.

"What if Ara- _**Aria**_ never left Otonoshi's office building?"

"You don't think...?" Shinjuurou began.

"She and Mitsuku might have been hiding in plain sight this entire time," The Chief said.

"The entire crate thing was a distraction meant to keep us away," Shinjuurou realized. "But how? Didn't you have the building swept clean?"

"There's got to be a hidden room somewhere," Katawase said, "Otonoshi was super paranoid! Why wouldn't he have had a panic room installed somewhere that Mitsuku Asahina would have known about?"

"We've got to get back over there," Shinjuurou said, and turned back into the bathroom, "I'll go get Rie."

**They were only half way back down the building's height when the timer on the website hit zero.**

The video cut to static, and moments later, Mitsuku Asahina's face appeared on the video, a grim expression on his face.

"It is with great regret that I inform you that dear Aria...was not in any of those five crates on the video. I apologize for the deception, Defeated Detective, but the necessary clues were there for you to put together."

He stood up, revealing that he was standing in a very familiar office- Rinroku Kaishou's.

"I find the timing no less than perfect, however, in that your chase across town allowed me the time to reach the Compulsive Liar's household, after my associates had rigged it with explosives." He held up a hand, "No, don't get up. In fact, don't even send anything but the fire department. You won't get here in time to stop me."

He ran his hands up his face and back across his hair.

"I only regret that so many lives have needed to be wasted to get to this stage. The Day of the Rising Sun. Kenta's former secretary who caught on too soon and needed to be...put on ice... Kenta himself, and Aria. Dear sweet Aria. Oh, such a shame that you all could not find her in time. But it all happened so fast, I cannot blame you for assuming that she had gone further than a mere city block away."

He smiled.

"To the Liar himself. Your tyranny is at an end. By the time you even hear about this, your whole media empire will have been toppled. That prized piece of software that allowed you to manipulate the internet?" He made a poof motion with his hands. "Gone. Useless. When the bomb detonates, our P Versus NP software will hit the internet and it will become mass-market freeware in an instant. In fact, anyone watching this live on the web will get a free development package downloaded onto their computer! No, it doesn't have any malware or anything like that...We're not monsters, you know."

He chuckled, "To the Liar's daughter who has been investigating in his stead. I do not know what brought you into the affairs of your accursed old man, but I am sorry that it will cost you your household. Oh, don't be concerned. My associates made sure to pack your clothes for you. They'll be shipped to...oh where was it? Hehe...Oh right. I guess I forgot. I guess that will be another mystery to solve..."

He glanced to his watch.

"Oh well, I do believe it's time for me to end this now. Local dispatch should be here any second now..." He waved to the camera. "Good bye, cruel world. May you awaken tomorrow under the light of the Rising Sun. A new era in which you are all no longer lied to by the man whose library I now stand in...and prepare to burn." He took a few steps away from the camera.

"To the Last Great Detective and his Girlfriend, the Liar's Daughter. The Ending has Not Yet Been Written," He smirked. "Catch Us If You Can."

The screen went white and the beginning rush of a "FWHOOM" could be heard before the video feed cut to static.


	6. Check Mate

Rie colapsed into Shinjuurou's arms when she heard this over the phone.

"Wh..what...?" She blinked. "Why would they...?"

 _"I'm sorry, Rie,"_ Izumi said over the phone, _"but we can see the fireball from here."_

"What the hell kind of plan is this?" Katawase asked. "Kill the guy who wrote your programming? Kill his secretary and string him across the city? Kidnap the police's hacker, and _pretend_ to string her up across the city? Then **Blowing** yourself up in a house bomb?!"

"Not to mention dropping the programer's niece into a garbage bin after hitting her with a car," Shinjuurou said.

 _"What?"_ Izumi asked in surprise. _"You_ _ **found**_ _her!? When-?"_

"She's fine. Just a broken rib or two. She's in the hospital right now," Shinjuurou lied.

_"And how did you-?"_

"We ran into her during our investigations at Steranko," Shinjuurou lied again. "She had a...trust fund that Kenta was funneling money into."

"Damn these Rising Sun people," Katawase growled, "how dare they...!"

 _"And true to his word, there's the file download. Just completed onto this laptop..."_ Izumi said. _"If it did it at this speed to every computer watching it across the world...?"_

"Bread's out of the toaster," Rie muttered, "cat's out of the bag."

"Rinroku's not going to like this one bit," Shinjuurou said, "I just hope he had bomb insurance."

"Knowing my dad," Rie chuckled grimly, "probably."

"Alright then, Izumi," Katawase said, "we're coming on our way back. See you in a bit."

_"Alright, later then."_

Katawase hung up and said flatly, "Something smells like fish oil."

"The timing of this was too smooth," Rie agreed. "Too precise."

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?" Katawase asked.

"That they were waiting for Kaishou, Rinroku to get out of town so they could pull this off without his supervision?" Shinjuurou asked.

"And how did they get access to my house?" Rie asked, "Our security system wouldn't just let anyone in."

"Actually," Katawase said, "and I know you guys might not like this, but a part of me's thinking that Aranea isn't the only cop in bed with Rising Sun."

"Izumi?" Rie asked.

"I hate to think it of the girl after all she's been through," Katawase said, _"But_ she's been point lead from the start of this case. It was _her_ email address that was alerted so that we would know to look at the hacked websites. She was the one who vouched for Aranea."

"She's also had the experience in forging new identities," Shinjuurou said simply.

"There was a reason you called me instead of her about Aranea," Katawase said.

"I've been suspicious of her since we unlocked the yearbook," Shinjuurou said. "But I didn't have to take a gamble that it was her."

"And not me?" Katawase asked.

"One Koyama, Isana," Rie said, "she was in Kenta's club along with everyone else."

**"Plus, there was something else Izumi said," Shinjuurou added, "back when we were in Otonoshi's house."**

_"That would be because we can't reach him," Izumi Koyama said as she entered the room. "His desk number forwards to your phone, Rie, and the personal number he gave me incase of emergency is telling me that he's out of the service area. Plus, it isn't common knowledge that Rinroku's out of town right now, so if a Kaishou isn't on the case, either the one called out or the daughter that's been known to work as his investigative agent, the Killer might grow suspicious."_

**"A short while before Izumi called us about Otonoshi's death, Rie got a call asking for her father," Shinjuurou explained. "Alicia also told us that she heard Kenta making a call just before she'd gotten run over."**

"Oh right," Rie nodded, "the unknown voice!"

"The only way Izumi would have known that Rie had set that call-forwarding up was if she was involved in that call somehow," Shinjuurou said.

"How's that work out?" Katawase asked.

"I'd only set it up just before Shinjuurou and I went out to dinner," Rie said, and held up a finger when the Police Chief's mouth twisted up into a smirk, "and yes, we are in a relationship. Don't shout it to the room."

**They hit the ground floor just then, and hurried out through the lobby to the exit towards Katawase's car.**

"So you got the call during dinner, and then...?" Katawase picked the conversation up as she started the engine.

"And about forty or fifty minutes later, Izumi called us both directly," Shinjuurou said, "Rie's ringtone was different the first time."

"That was the one I set for forwarded calls so I'd know how to answer them," Rie explained.

"So Otonoshi called Rinroku's office to see if he was home or not?" Katawase asked as she pulled out into traffic.

"Izumi knew about the trip, and had Kenta call to make sure that dad wasn't getting his calls, which was practically ensured by my call-forwarding setup," Rie realized. "So when they _Knew_ that dad wasn't home...!"

"They knew to go ahead with the plan," Shinjuurou concluded. "Kenta probably had finished P Versus NP just before that, so the timing must have seemed perfect for them."

"Why would Izumi do this though?" Katawase asked. "And what's her connection to this Isana girl?"

"Cousin? Sister?" Rie said with a shrug, "Izumi probably got Aria the tech job after meeting her from the school."

"And since those kids were all in the same club," Shinjuurou said, "that's the connection with Kenta and Mitsuku."

"As for the why," Rie frowned, "we'll have to ask her ourselves."

"So who killed Otonoshi?" Katawase asked. "Asahina?"

"Probably," Shinjuurou nodded.

"And the guy in the crates?" Katawase continued.

"Asahina too, if he had a thing for limb splitting," Rie guessed, though seemed squicked out by it.

"So how are we going to go about this?" Katawase asked.

"We'll have Izumi take us straight to Aranea," Shinjuurou planned, "she'll probably be keeping us away from the secret room as best as she can. So whatever she does, we should probably do the opposite."

"What if she pulls a Gun on us?" Katawase asked.

"Try to let me be the one to get shot?" Shinjuurou offered.

"No way," Rie shook her head, "not happening, Shinjuurou."

"Rie, I've been stabbed clean through with a wooden pole once," Shinjuurou said, "I can handle a bullet."

"Detective," Katawase said as they came to a red light, "one of these days you're going to have to catch me up on all of those cases you took before I got promoted. I feel like I'm out of the loop more than I should be."

"It might be more than your brain could handle, chief," Shinjuurou remarked.

"I'll be the judge of that."

**They arrived soon enough, and re-entered Otonoshi, Kenta's office.**

"What are we doing here, exactly?" Izumi asked as she surveyed the scene before her.

"Alright, let's do a bit of role play here," Katawase said as she sat Rie down at the chair, and moved to stand Shinjuurou at the doorway. "So let's say that you're Aranea, Rie-chan, and Yuki-san, you're Asahina."

"I'm here at the computer, working on hacking," Rie said as she sat in the rather comfy chair, looking around the room.

"I'm holding a gun," Shinjuurou held his right hand in a gun shape.

"So Asahina comes in-" Katawase says, "he tries to be courteous to Aranea at first, but then confronts her on her dual identity?"

"Sticking to that theory, are we?" Izumi asked with crossed arms.

"So I shoot the computer to make my point," Shinjuurou said flatly.

"Oh no!" Rie said dramatically, "I've been caught!"

Izumi's eye twitched, "Too dramatic."

"So Asahina tells Aranea to stand up, and to unhook the computer from the broken monitor," Katawase continued.

Rie stands up, remarking, "By the way, can we get a chair like this when the case is over? It's really comfy!"

"I'll see if I can find the model number online," Shinjuurou replied.

"Heh," Katawase chuckles, "so, that's all what it appears to be. Instead, maybe, Asahina and Aranea converse about their love life? Maybe it's a steamy affair and Aranea's putting that upset look on her face more because she's admitting that she's pregnant with their love child or something!"

Shinjuurou and Rie sputtered at that, and Izumi remarked: "Definitely not."

"Regardless of their conversational content!" Katawase continued on, "Aranea picks up the computer, and Asahina leads her outside!" Shinjuurou and Rie quickly exited, and Katawase and Izumi followed.

"Now what?" Shinjuurou asked.

"From here," Katawase said, "they go to the elevators!"

**The four of them headed to and entered the elevator.**

"Now then...!" Katawase continued, "We lost camera feeds at this point, right?"

"Right," Izumi agreed, "and they didn't reboot until after you arrived."

"Logic dictates they went to the parking garage next," Rie said, "since Asahina needs to get from here to my place."

"Ah! That's true!" Katawase said, "But what if Aranea wasn't _***IN***_ the elevator!"

"E...Excuse me?" Izumi blinked.

"So from here they split up," Shinjuurou said. "Asahina stays in the elevator and Aranea gets out with the computer."

"So since we know where Asahina goes, we'll follow Aranea's path instead!" Katawase pumped a fist into the air.

"...Which is to where, exactly?" Izumi asked.

**"To the secret room, of course!" Katawase said as they exited the elevator, and headed back into Otonoshi's office.**

"So...What secret room?" Izumi asked as she leaned up against one of the bookshelves.

"Kenta was really paranoid," Rie said, "but properly so! He laid plans in for just about everything- remodeling his house so many times _just_ to update security."

"We wondered if Kenta didn't do the same for his office," Shinjuurou said as he held up his cellphone, "so I made a few calls."

"As it turns out, Otonoshi made a major reno' on this office building last year- _mysteriously_ cutting the living space on this side of the building clean down the middle with an entire section of offices from top floor to parking garage being sealed off for some mysterious reason not even listed on paper," Katawase grinned.

"Kenta's office happens to have been halved in space due to that sudden renovation," Shinjuurou said, pointing at the wall that Izumi was leaning against. "That wall was added, to be precise."

Izumi stepped away from it suddenly, as if it had shocked her. "What? Seriously?"

"Yup!" Rie nodded.

**The Bookshelf was pulled away, revealing a staircase heading down and down and down.**

"Gentlemen first, Shinjuurou," Rie remarked.

"Sure thing," Shinjuurou replied.

Katawase laughed, "Hue Hue Hue..."

**And so they descended.**

Down and down they went until they reached the bottom floor, which was just below the parking garage, and not once did Izumi even suggest calling for backup.

Shinjuurou found that unnerving.

Even more so when they found a fake body-cast of Aranea's torso- the arm cut off view that they had seen in the video.

"Well," Rie said, "that makes me feel somewhat better."

"Me too," Shinjuurou agreed. "Now the question is, where's the real Aranea?"

They progressed deeper into what appeared to be a safe-house filled with all kinds of computers...

"How much do you wanna bet that drop box is stored on one of these?" Katawase asked.

"High chances of it, I'd say" Rie said.

They continued searching, finding various whiteboards that had mostly been wiped clean, save for one that had a map of the city with the crate locations circled on it.

And then they found Aranea.

Or what was left of her, at any rate.

"...This is not better than being dismembered," Rie said.

The woman had lied down in a chair and strapped some sort of helmet to her head- a helmet that was hooked up to a computer terminal and seemed to have electrocuted her to death.

"What the fuck happened here?" Katawase asked.

"Brain Scan," Shinjuurou deduced instantly. "She's uploaded herself into the internet."

"Why would she do tha-AHH!"

_**click.** _

And then came the moment they'd all been dreading.

Izumi had pulled her gun out and primed it while aiming it at Katawase's head, which was held steady by the fact that the Prosecutor had the Police Chief in a choke hold.

"...Izumi-chan?" Katawase asked calmly, and yet fearfully of the gun pointed at her head.

"Nobody move," Izumi said flatly.

Things remained silent for a moment.

"You weren't supposed to see this," Izumi said finally. "You weren't supposed to figure out that it was me."

"You bugged our phones, didn't you?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Just Katawase's," Izumi admitted, "I couldn't hack into either yours or Rie's, Shinjuurou. Don't know how, but those phones have encryption well beyond anything I've seen."

"Luck, I guess," Shinjuurou lied.

"Or magic, whatever," Izumi rolled her eyes, "what do I care if the Midgit brigade messed with your phones? I still listened in on your little chat in the elevator and car."

"Doesn't matter now, does it?" Rie asked.

"Not especially, no," Izumi narrowed her eyes.

"So what now?" Shinjuurou asked.

"I take Katawase hostage, escape to my car, get out of town, start plan C," Izumi said simply, "then you two try and fail to hunt me down for years on end while The Rising Sun undoes all of the damage done by Rinroku Kaishou's hands. Even the war."

"'Undoes'?" Shinjuurou asked, "You can't just _undo_ a war, Izumi."

"You're right," She laughed, "but I can give people a new target for their anger. Rinroku got us into that war, and by my hand, I'll make sure the bastard gets what's coming to him."

"Why are you doing this, Izumi?" Rie asked. "Didn't you work with my father to-?"

"Work?" Izumi spat, "WORK? Oh no, young Kaishou, I did not _work_ with your father so much as I did _gain his trust_."

"And what about Hayami?" Shinjuurou asked.

"That guy was too self-absorbed and love struck for his own good," Izumi said, "I would've congratulated him if his plan hadn't backfired on him the way it did though. Would've saved me the trouble, and The Rising Sun the lives."

"So you made this elaborate ruse up, after that, didn't you?" Shinjuurou asked.

"After you proved how much of a spanner in the works you and Inga were?" Izumi scoffed, "I had to make sure you were distracted. Honestly, I'd been planning on having Inga around more, though. You nearly screwed our plan up majorly with him not being there that first night."

"Even when mortal, he's screwing up evil plots," Shinjuurou muttered.

"Has everyone forgotten that I'm here?" Katawase asked timidly.

"Nope," Izumi chuckled, "in fact, I was just about to make my exit. You nearly caught me monologing, Detectives." And then she changed the aim of her gun from Katawase and-

**BANG.**

_**"RIE!"** _

**Everything went dark for the Liar's daughter.**

Katwase watched in horror as she was dragged away from the girl, who had already been caught by Shinjuurou and was already trying to stop the bleeding. "What the hell Izumi!?" she whined to Izumi as she was forced up a stairwell one floor. "You shot her! You shot Rie!"

"I didn't aim for anything vital," Izumi said coldly.

"That'-What!?" Katawase shouted. "How the hell can you not aim for something vital!?"

"It's the right shoulder, should be a clean shot through and through," Izumi rolled her eyes. "I want Rinroku to suffer, but killing his daughter? Please. I'm not that stupid!" She kicked a door open, and out into the parking garage they went.

"Why?" Katawase asked, "Why shoot her!?"

"I needed Shinjuurou immobilized while I made my escape with you," Izumi remarked. "Why else?"

"You're not going to get away with this," Katawase said as she was pushed towards a car, "I'll-"

"You'll what?" Izumi cut her off with the question, "Arrest me? Fat chance. After today, you're never going to see me again."

"You mean to kill me then?" Katawase asked.

"Like I said," Izumi laughed, and then threw the Chief in front of her and spun her around.

"What-?" Katawase blinked in confusion as-

 ** _THWACK!_**  
"I'm not that stupid."


	7. Tsunami

Rie Kaishou's eyes opened and began looking around the room as she woke up to the sound of a heart rate monitor.

"Meeeow..." And then she saw Inga sitting in a hospital chair holding the Toaster Cat.

"I'm not dead, am I?" Rie asked groggily.

"Huh?" Inga glanced over, and then grinned at her, "Morning, Rie!"

"Mornin'," The Detective's Daughter blinked the sleep out of her eyes and tried to sit up.

"Ah! Let me help!" Inga got up, put the toaster cat back down on the chair, and ran over to help her up. "The doctors said that you shouldn't try moving your shoulder just yet! But you're really lucky that it didn't hit anything vital! That shot went clean through and through!"

"It did?" Rie asked, and then felt a slight sting in her right shoulder as Inga helped turn the dial on the bed's controls to help turn it more into a lounge chair. "Ow!"

"Yeah, but considering that Izumi was the one that shot you, I'm not really all that surprised," Inga said in a quieter tone, almost whispering conspiratorially. "She probably aimed where she knew it wouldn't hit anything major, and Shinjuurou got you to the hospital pretty quickly after that too!"

Rie's eyes widened, "Wait, Shinjuurou? Where is he?"

"Here at the hospital," Inga said, "but he's talking with Mayoi right now about what we should do about Izumi."

"You mean Chief Katawase?" Rie asked. "Is she alright?"

"'Sides a concussion?" Inga shrugged. "Yeah, fine, I guess."

"Concussion?" Rie asked, "What happened?"

"I got pistol whipped upside the head in the parking lot," Katawase said as she and Shinjuurou came in, "that's what happened."

"Rie," Shinjuurou smiled, "it's good to see that you're awake."

"It's good to be awake," Rie said, "though I feel really confused about what happened?"

"Izumi shot you, then dragged me into the parking lot while Shinuurou-san was keeping you from bleeding out, and then she hit me over the head," Katawase said with a scowl. "With her gun. Not even the handle. She hit me with the whole damn thing like it was a brick!" She then added, "I'm not a happy police chief right now."

"So what do we do now?" Rie asked.

"You'll stay here and rest up," Shinjuurou said, "we've got people searching all over town for her, but we're not having much luck."

"Aranea's quite the hacker, even as a data spider on the internet," Katawase explained. "She's been stifling our every move with some cutesy eight eyed emoticon while Networks world wide have gone down overnight, especially with the P Versus NP hack out there for anyone to use." She sighed, "Just the last hour alone I've heard reports of the world economy crashing ten times over. You guys think the war was bad? It's looking like everything's going to hell."

"Flights have been canceled too," Shinjuurou said, "though phones seem to have been left alone..." He smiled slightly, "Your dad called."

"He did?" Rie asked, frowning slightly. "What'd he have to say?"

"A lot of rather unpleasant things about Izumi," Katawase said with a chuckle, "can't say I disagree with him at this point."

"Other than that, he said that he can't get a flight back here to help," Shinjuurou said, "although he and I finally agreed on one thing."

"What's that?" Rie asked.

"That Izumi's going to pay for shooting you," Shinjuurou smirked.

"Which lead into all those unpleasant things I mentioned," Katawase flashed a grin.

Rie smiled as well at it, though it was a hollow one. "So where does this leave us for now?"

"Trying to find Izumi," Inga said simply. "Kazamori can't even access the net from the safe house, and Alicia's not really willing to venture out via wifi with Aranea prowling everything like she is."

"In other news," Shinjuurou said, "it seems that my appliances weren't the only things suddenly coming to life."

"What?" Rie asked.

"In addition to all the world wide infrastructure crashes?" Shinjuurou explained, "Somehow toasters, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, computers...Anything wireless not affected by the P Versus NP stuff? Basically it's all come to life."

"World. Wide." Inga added.

Rie blinked at the boy who was petting the Toaster Cat, then asked, "...Seriously?"

"Completely at random too," Katawase said. "The first major outbreak reports came from production factorys in China, a few Toy stores across the UK, oh, and just about every construction machine in the USA going on strike for better working pay."

"..." Rie leaned backwards into her pillow and closed her eyes with a sigh. "Please tell me I'm in a coma and this is all a bad dream?"

"Sorry," Shinjuurou said, "but you're wide awake right now, Rie."

"I could hit you over the head with my gun, if you'd like," Katawase amended, "but in my experience? It ain't worth it."

**Izumi Koyama had thrown the world into chaos. And for the following week, the world twisted and turned and convoluted itself into some new form that it had never been before.**

From her spot safe and sound in her mansion, An Osada watched all of this transpire with curious eyes.

It seemed now that the crimes of the past had virtually been erased, literally in some cases.

An wasn't sure what to make of this. She wasn't sure what chaos the world had become, or what it would finally settle into.

All that was known for sure was that a large portion of the world's online community had been given a devastating tool that was throwing the world off the rails it had been on. Wars? What wars? Nobody gave a damn about any wars now.

Wars were a thing of the past when anyone could tell a bank computer they'd put in ten billion trillion dollars into their account, when that money had never even existed in the past.

Wars were a relic of a long forgotten age when a single money debt could be paid off by telling computers that some non-existent zeros and ones had been sent through as payment.

War? What does that word even mean.

Indeed, for the four lives wasted by the Rising Sun's opening gambit, that blood was a mere speck of paint on the wall compared to the chaos that was this new age and era of the world.

**Rie Kaishou had been discharged from the hospital, and she and Shinjuurou had joined Inga, Kazamori, and Alicia at An's mansion.**

"It's about as safe as safe can be," Shinjuurou said to Rie as he lead her up the stairs to the guest room An had provided for them. "So we'll stay here until things settle down."

"I guess that's alright," Rie glanced at her right arm, held in a sling so as not to agitate the bullet hole in her shoulder. "Still though, it's not your place, or my place..."

"Yeah, well, I don't trust my place to be secure right now," Shinjuurou said. "Not when Izumi sent your clothes there."

"I _was_ wondering how you got this dress for me," Rie said with a giggle.

"I'm just glad the mail system worked long enough for it to get there," Shinjuurou shook his head when he thought about the mess that the Mail Delivery System had become world wide.

A week later, and the world was in even more of a mess than it had been to begin with. Thankfully, it seemed, that someone had the smart idea at the start of all of it to disable the world's nuclear missile supplies, not to mention the growing challenges in military equipment suddenly coming to life and changing things.

True to Izumi's words though, news of Rinroku Kaishou's involvement in the war slowly came to light over the week since it all had begun, along with numerous other documents on the falsified 'deductions' that the man had made over the years.

Izumi had been using her proximity to Rinroku and his associates to document dozens upon dozens of files and cases and charges to be levied against him. Curiously, though, Shinjuurou noticed that quite a few cases that he'd been involved in were not listed in the massive folder of documents, with the Osada case, the Sasa case, and anything related to the Bettenou Incident being of the most prominent missing.

How did he know that the last one was missing and simply not being delayed?

Izumi had released information on a small time case that had occurred just after the confrontation at the TV studio.

Shinjuurou wasn't sure of why that was, but he was going to use it to his advantage if he could.

**"It seems hypocritical of her to have left out such big cases," Kazamori commented as they sat down for lunch.**

"Yeah, what's with that?" Inga asked.

"The only thing I can figure out," Shinjuurou began, "is that she left those ones out as a puzzle for us to figure out, since we're the only ones who'd know."

"Maybe," Inga frowned, "the Kazamori thing? I can see her leaving that out because of the R.A.I. thing that happened with Aria. The An thing? I can see why she'd go along with that one after we uploaded the song to the net like we did...She's covering her own bases...or she forgot."

"It _could_ be she forgot about them when uploading them," Shinjuurou frowned, "but the Bettenou thing? If she were really all about releasing the truth about Kaishou, Rinroku, then that would be one of the biggest lynch pins against him."

"Maybe she doesn't care since he's pretty much going to jail at this point?" Inga offered.

"It doesn't follow..." Shinjuurou frowned, "The only thing I can think of is that she wants us to retrace the steps of that case for some reason...or maybe she's waiting until she's out of the line of fire to release those files?"

"You think she's hiding out somewhere in that investigation path?" Kazamori asked.

"With all the chaos that's gone on, hiding in plain sight might be the best thing," Shinjuurou said. "It's been a week now, so if she was hiding out in any of those places then she'll be preparing to move out from there soon...she's got no choice left either to release the Bettenou case files or wait even more."

"Either way though," Kazamori said, "we have a lead."

"We have a lead," Shinjuurou agreed.

**After hours of searching the various locations involved in the Bettenou incident, the only remaining place was the finally reconstructed TV studio, and that place was too high-trafic for anyone to have been hiding there...Although, there was a new high rise apartment building being built right across the harbor from it.**

A crack of thunder and a flash of lightning occurred a moment after Katawase arrived at the building, where Shinjuurou and Inga were waiting for her.

"So this is the place?" The Police Chief asked.

"This is the place," Shinjuurou said.

"Right across the harbor from the TV studio," Katawase observed, "Half-built, no security. Damn, how the hell did we not think to look here sooner?"

"I'm just surprised they stopped construction on it," Inga said. "Why was that?"

"The construction tools here revolted too about around the same time," Shinjuurou said, "Izumi must've thought it was ironic enough to tempt a final confrontation after the elaborate story she's crafted so far."

"The Rising Sun does seem to like their monologues," Katawase noted. "She's probably been hitting herself over the head for missing the chance since she shot Rie-chan."

"Did you call for backup?" Shinjuurou asked.

"If we're wrong about this," Katawase said, "I'd rather not have my men look like fools again going after a wild goose chase when they've already got egg on our faces from the _crates_ and for letting Izumi get away in the first place."

"And if we're right," Shinjuurou added, "then Izumi get's a show to broadcast to the world."

"There's that too," Katawase agreed.

"So are we going to go in now or what?" Inga asked.

"Might as well stop putting off the inevitable," Shinjuurou answered.

**And so they entered.**

Katawase shone her flashlight into the darkened halls of the building, keeping it and her gun at the same angle and level as they reached the second floor.

She nodded at Shinjuurou, and he and Inga came sneaking forward.

Quietly, the trio searched the building, getting higher and higher through the floors in a calm, continuous manner, unaware of the cameras recording their every movement...

**And being hacked into the nearby TV Station's broadcast list.**

"What the hell is this?" A Technician asked as he observed the video feed being overlapped onto all of their channel broadcasts.

**"Is that Shinjuurou?" Rie asked in surprise as the image on the TV changed from a comedy to a real life drama.**

"It is! Inga and the Chief too!" An agreed. "Where are they?"

"Near the TV station, I think," Kazamori noted. "They must have found Izumi's hide out if this is being shown." _'Good luck, you two.'_

**All across Japan, local broadcasts were being overwritten with this slow, steady, floor by floor climb of the building.**

Everyone stayed glued to their screens as they watched this, and, even on the internet, the world wide chaos slowed to a halt as the video was put up via live-stream.

**Higher, higher...**

"We're running out of floor," Inga noted with concern as the flooring beneath them started becoming less and less stable concrete, and more and more flimsy sheets of plywood.

"We're getting close then, if she's here," Katawase said as the sound of a large cloth flapping in the wind drafted past.

Then there was a flash of lightning- and a caped outline appeared against the open sky, a floor above them, also serving to highlight the trio of sneaks to the rogue Prosecutor.

"THERE!" Shinjuurou pointed upwards as Izumi bolted in the moment of recognition.

"KOYAMA, IZUMI," Katawase shouted, "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!"

**A gunshot rang out through the dark and stormy night sky.**

The world watched as Katawase shot upwards at Izumi- but was unsure if the woman had been hit or not by the initial shot.

The trio ran for the nearest ascension point, and left Inga there to guard it in case Izumi somehow got behind them as Shinjuurou and Katawase ascended.

The camera changed angles, showing Izumi skipping up to an even higher, and even more unfinished floor.

**"STOP!" Katawase shouted.**

Izumi spun around and threw something at them through a gap in the flooring- and Katawase fired off a set of shots- hitting the object and detonating it.

**FLASHBANG!**

A flash of light and sound briefly overwhelmed the broadcast, but when it cleared, Shinjuurou had managed to stay on the floor while Katawase had vanished.

**"I'm fine!" her voice remained however, "GO AFTER HER!"**

Katawase had lost her balance and fallen through a gap in the flooring, but had managed to land in a large sand sack pile on the floor immediately below.

Shinjuurou ran.

"This is such a cliche you know!" Shinjuurou shouted as he ran up a set of stairs- the penultimate set in the entire building. "Leading us up here like this after everything you've done?"

Silence followed as Shinjuurou followed a trail of blood on the steel beams beneath his feet. So at least one of Katawase's shots had made it through. "What? You don't have anything to say to me now?" He followed the blood trail along to the final set of stairs. "Are you really playing this scenario to the fullest? And for what? Your _audience?_ "

His shoes stepped up the wooden stairs carefully, calmly, with exact planning, unlike the person whose plans had worked so wonderfully until this final moment.

"This isn't going to end well if you're seriously going to keep this charade up," Shinjuurou called out, following the trail of blood to the final destination, "just stop this now, nobody will think any less of you."

He stepped up onto the lone steel beam that stretched out over the ruined city, confronting the shadowy figure at the far end of the beam, back turned to him as she stared down at the city that looked up from below.

"It's time we ended this," Shinjuurou said, "Izumi."

With a flourish, the cloaked figure spun around- cape flaring out to the side dramatically as she turned to face the Last Great Detective.

Her right hand was clutching to her left shoulder, blood flowing down from the wound.

"Ironic," Izumi said, "I shoot Rie in the right shoulder by careful aim, and then Katawase nails me in the left through sheer blind luck."

"Yeah, Ironic." Shinjuurou said.

"How did you know I was here?" Izumi asked.

"Bettenou," Shinjuurou said. "You completely avoided uploading anything related to that incident to the internet."

"Good," She smirked, "you figured it out. And here I was worried that you'd just gotten lucky and some random citizen saw me come in here this morning."

"What the hell was even the point of all of this?" Shinjuurou asked. "I thought I knew you better than this, Izumi. We _**all**_ thought we knew you better."

"The point?" Izumi asked with a laugh, "The point was to prove to the world what a monster Kaishou, Rinroku was."

"So?" Shinjuurou asked. "I thought what happened with Hayami across the harbor was enough betrayal for one lifetime."

"Hayami was a love sick fool who thought he knew the real me," Izumi said with a scowl. "He had no clue who I was. Who I used to be before the war."

"Then explain," Shinjuurou said.

"How many people actually understand what happened in the war? What sparked it?" She said with a confident smile, "I'll bet you that you don't know." She made sure to adjust her stance a bit as a gust of wind blew past her. "And so, in front of the whole world, I'll explain what the hell happened. I'll admit, even I didn't know what it was that truly sparked it all off, not until I met you, Yuki, Shinjuurou. You and that Demon of yours."

"Inga?" Shinjuurou frowned, "Inga's just a kid. Sure, I guess you could call him a demon, but-"

"Shut up!" Izumi shouted as crack of lightning went off behind her, "You know I mean that woman. The one who asked me that one question infront of the world." She scowled, "If she'd phrased that question even the slightest bit differently, _years_ of work would have gone down the drain as I blew my cover in an instant."

"Seriously?" Shinjuurou blinked, "I didn't realize that we were that much of a-."

"I said to shut the fuck up!" Izumi grit her teeth. "When that man with Bettenou arrived, told the world about that video...that sparked the war, but it was Kaishou, Rinroku that fanned the flames. During that first wave of terror attacks following the video, quite a few of them were home grown fakes. A highschool was just one of them, blown up by our own Anti-terror forces. My little sister was a part of the P Versus NP solving club at that school. Isana-chan _Died_ in that attack."

"You were already working for the Prosecutor's office by then, weren't you?" Shinjuurou asked.

"I was," Izumi admitted. "I was a low rank and file, but high enough to learn who ordered that attack after the fact. Kaishou, Rinroku was the one to push the button on the school."

"So you vowed revenge," Shinjuurou guessed as another gust of wind rushed past.

"I reached out to the kids in that club who survived. Kenta, Mitsuku, Aria..." Izumi chuckled grimly. "We all knew we were living on borrowed time after that. So we planned, programmed, plotted...we waited with so much patience that the war ended before we knew it, and it was but a few months before the Bettenou cult surfaced."

"That seems to happen a lot with P Versus NP," Shinjuurou noted.

"But it still wasn't finished," Izumu continued. "And then _**YOU**_ showed up, Rinroku's own little summoned monsters who could solve things he couldn't, and then he would just _**spin**_ it into his favor anyways." She scoffed, "After _**your**_ fifth successful case, we realized you'd be a problem."

Thunder rolled, lightning flashed.

"It strengthened your resolve, didn't it?" Shinjuurou asked. "Well, I guess that explains why you grew so cold to me and Inga after a while. We never even really did anything to earn your ire, so that always made me feel off."

"Exactly that!" Izumi laughed, "And from that day on, we put the final pieces together faster and faster. Then Hayami pulled out Bettenou and brought every player we needed to be wary of to our attention. Our final plan had to involve all of the players of that Bettenou Incident, or else we risked you coming in as an outside problem and screwing things up so thoroughly that everything went to hell...And even then with the perfect plan, you _**still**_ kept finding ways to screw us over."

"You mentioned that before," Shinjuurou said. "For the record though, Inga didn't have anything to do with messing with my phone so you couldn't hack it."

"Oh no, obviously not," Izumi laughed, "not when the whole world starts having its appliances and tools coming to life and sprouting limbs they never had before."

"So is that it?" Shinjuurou asked, "The end of your motive rant?"

Izumi broke down into laughter, "Yeah, no, not really!" She narrowed her eyes at him as the wind began to pick up more, blowing her cape around dramatically, "It might just be the blood loss getting to me, or it could be that I've pent this all up inside me for so long that it's driven me insane, but I'm feeling HELLA Talkative right about now!"

"Uh..." Shinjuurou blinked, "I'm pretty sure it's the blood loss."

"See, the timing of all this _**SUCKED.**_ We were hoping that Rinroku would've been here personally to witness this chaos," Izumi said, "but we had to scrap Plan A because he was out of town!"

"You know, I've got to ask," Shinjuurou frowned, "why not wait then?"

"Because Kenta's secretary found our plans and tried to ruin it all!" Izumi scowled, "Do you know he nearly convinced Kenta to take that niece of his and skip town? Move to _**HAWAII?**_ "

"Hawaii actually seems like a nice place to be right about now," Shinjuurou muttered as a thunder strike went off. "So you killed Kenta because he was wanting to pull out?"

"No, we had to kill the secretary to keep him quiet." Izumi scowled, "Ice only keeps a body fresh in the condition we needed it in for about a month. Even then, we nearly blew it because we didn't kill that R.A.I. of Kenta's thoroughly enough. How can running one over with a truck at over sixty miles per hour _**NOT**_ kill an R.A.I.!?"

"She's not an R.A.I. though," Shinjuurou said, "she may be using an R.A.I. body, but she's started as a flesh and blood human."

"Yeah yeah, 'R.A.I.'s can be used for medical purposes'," Izumi spat some blood out then. "I've heard that spiel millions of times from Kenta already. Didn't stop the _military_ from wanting R.A.I.'s, didn't stop the _perverts_ from wanting R.A.I.'s, didn't stop the fucking _**murderers**_ from wanting R.A.I.'s. And then she goes and gives Aria the idea of uploading into the net by her merely _**existing**_..." She scowled, "You know that Aria wasn't even supposed to upload her brain like that? But no, as soon as she saw that we were going down there, she _**had**_ to take us into Plan C instead of trying to ride it out."

The building shook in the wind.

"Look, Izumi," Shinjuurou said, "as much as I'd like to keep talking, I don't think this building is going to give us the time."

"Too bad!" Izumi shouted. "I'm not submitting myself to arrest! As long as Aria's on the internet, the Rising Sun can continue to function and publish documents, becoming a force for-" The buildings sudden shake caused her to nearly lose her balance. "Woahh...that felt bad..."

"We're not supposed to be up here, Izumi," Shinjuurou said, "come on down and we'll talk this out on the ground."

"No way no how!" Izumi shouted, "Not til you explain to the world how you figured out it was me!"

"...What?" Shinjuurou asked.

"Tell the world how the "Last Great Detective" figured out that I, Koyama, Izumi, was the one who did all of this!" She shouted again.

"...Alright, fine? You want to know?" He scowled and took a step forward toward her, "You tipped me off to many times. Rie's phone redirect, the fact that you knew that the initial hack was a supercharged P Versus NP when all the website said was that it WAS P Versus NP and nothing about how it could beat Rinroku's systems. You bragged about it! And then there was your introduction of Aranea to us, sorry, I mean Aria. You made the introductions, you made us think she was trust worthy. Hell, you even set us on the trail of the Rising Sun by _**calling us out**_ with a murder of one of your own members! I guarantee you, if you wanted a confusing Mystery that would've thrown us off, don't start by killing the guy and writing a **CALL OUT MESSAGE** _ **ON THE WALL!"**_ He continued on closer, "Do you even realize how stupid that is!? If you had just given an anonymous call about a disturbance, NOT put a message on the wall, and NOT broadcast it onto the internet until AFTER the police arrived, then MAYBE you might have stumped us." He motioned widely to the world, "Or hell, GO AHEAD and do EVERYTHING in the exact same way that you did, but don't do it to the guy who has ties to _**THE ENTIRE GROUP**_!"

"..." Izumi stared at him for a moment, then started laughing. She laughed so hard that she stumbled backwards and...

The Building shook as lightning hit just barely shy of the building they were on- Izumi slipped off of the steel beam...!

Only to be caught by a last second lunge by Shinjuurou- managing to catch her by the right arm as she flailed it upwards.

"W...Wha...!" She stared up at him in confusion.

"Like hell I'm letting you get out of it that easy!" Shinjuurou growled at her, "Not when you shot Rie!" he began pulling her back up onto the beam. "Koyama, Izumi," He declared as he lead her back across the beam and towards more solid ground, "you're under arrest for the murders of Otonoshi, Kenta, and his former Secretary; The attempted murders of Otonoshi, Alicia; Kaishou, Rie; and Kaishou, Rinroku; Accessory to a Suicide Bombing; Assault on an officer with a hand gun and a flash grenade; The endangerment of civilian lives by hanging crates over city intersections with intent to drop; and Obstruction of Justice on so many fucking occasions that I don't even have the breath to list them all."

**They descended a floor, and met up with Inga and Katawase, who was nursing a dislocated shoulder.**

"Here," Katawase said as she handed Shinjuurou a set of handcuffs with her good arm, "you deserve the honors."

Inga just grinned as Shinjuurou took the handcuffs and quickly cuffed Izumi, completing the ritual by saying, "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Izumi sighed as he continued on. "You have the right to an attorney, and if you do not have an attorney, one _might_ be provided for you..."

**They descended further as the rain began to fall. Thankfully, the lower floors were completed enough that the rain didn't affect them all that much. And then, as they reached the bottom floor and exited the building...**

A crowd awaited them- cheering and clapping and yelling for the successful arrest of the woman who had caused so much trouble over the last week.

Izumi's eyes panned through the crowd, and then spotted the familiar faces of Rie, Kazamori, Kenta's niece...and An Osada.

The sheer strangeness of both of that girl's presence there and the sight of all of these people, many of them colleagues Izumi had worked with in the past, forced her to finally break- a sob wracked her body, shooting pain through her left shoulder, and she began to cry.

"Is she having a breakdown?" An asked of Shinjuurou, who replied in very much a similar way that he had that day at the cemetery.

"Ah? Yeah." He said with an Ironic Echo, "We all break when our dreams are shattered before our eyes. Some dreams just break more dramatically than others."

"I see, I do hope she gets help for that shoulder, though," An remarked.

"I'll see to it personally," Katawase said grimly, "she hit me over the head with a gun you know! Then she goes and dislocates my shoulder with a flash grenade!" There was a pause as Izumi was put into the awaiting doors of a police cruiser. "I'm a happy Police Chief right now, ya know?"

The door closed with a slam.


	8. After Math and Equal Logs

"Not bad, Yuki, Shinjuurou," Rie admired as she watched the police cruiser pull away, "not bad at all."

"That was hard core the way you read Izumi her rights like that!" Inga said, "Especially when you told her that she _might_ get an attorney! Hahaha! That was the best part!"

"Honestly, that was a lot more effort than I was expecting her to put up," Shinjuurou sighed.

"Indeed," Kazamori agreed, "I was not expecting her to rant like that."

"Why'd you come here anyways?" Shinjuurou asked.

"It was An's idea," Alicia spoke up, making the girl blush slightly.

"I...I just wanted to be on the other side of that conversation," the Osada girl admitted.

"I don't think the irony was lost on her," Shinjuurou said as he put his hands in his pockets. "Not one bit."

"So what now?" Rie asked.

"Now?" Shinjuurou asked in return, "Now I think we all should go home and rest up... It's been a long week."

**FIVE DAYS LATER...**

"We are not naming it _Kato_ ," Kazamori said firmly.

"C'mon!" Inga whined as he held the Toaster Cat to his chest, "But it fits so nicely! _KA_ from Cat and _TO_ from Toaster!"

"If that's the kind of naming logic you want to use for the cat, then I'm not going to let you have a say in naming anything," Kazamori insisted. "Choose a real name."

"But _Kato_ is a real name!" Inga insisted, then relented when she kept a firm glare aimed at him, "Alright then, what would _**YOU**_ name it?"

"Caroline," Kazamori said simply.

"Okay, nice name, but it made me realize something."

"And what's that?"

"Is this toaster cat a boy or a girl toaster cat?"

Kazamori blinked, then replied, "I had not thought about that."

"Then the obvious answer is-!" Inga said dramatically as he held the cat up into the air, "We must find another Toaster cat and compare their bodies!"

"What if we find a toaster cat of the same gender?" Kazamori asked.

"Then we'll have to find another?" Inga shrugged. "But if our cat's a girl, we can call it Caroline, if it's a boy, we'll call it Kato!"

"That sounds like a decent compromise," Kazamori agreed.

**And so they went off to find another toaster cat.**

Alicia, having simply constructed a new R.A.I. chassis from existing parts to give herself a new identity as well as to simply not need to repair the damage done to her old body, bowed to Shinjuurou and Rie. "I don't think I can ever thank you enough for catching my uncle's killer." When she stood up, she had to brush the longer, black hair borrowed from Kazamori's old maintenance rack back over her shoulder.

"It was our pleasure to help out," Shinjuurou said, then glanced towards the house before them, and the man, Daigo Fukashima, waiting at the door. "Now go on, your new life awaits."

"And you're sure they don't mind that I'm using an R.A.I. body?" Alicia asked.

"No, Daigo and his family know you were a human originally," Shinjuurou said, "and besides, after the chaos of the last two weeks? I'm pretty sure nobody cares about that silly old 'data privacy whatchamacallit act' anymore anyways."

"And even if they did, the sudden upsurge in normal appliances coming to life has made the government rethink that law in the first place," Rie added. "I heard they're doing an update vote tonight."

"Once again," Alicia smiled, "thank you."

"Be sure to give us a call if something comes up," Shinjuurou said.

"I will!" And with that, Alicia turned towards her new home.

**They turned back to the awaiting Taxi, and got in.**

"To the airport, please," Shinjuurou directed.

"Got it," The driver accepted the directions.

"You think she'll be okay here?" Rie asked of Shinjuurou as the Taxi began to lurch forward.

"I've got a good feeling about them," Shinjuurou said, "I bet once the animation wave hits her, the R.A.I. parts will turn into organic pieces, and she'll have a living body again. That one kid of Fukashima's looks about her age, too..."

Rie laughed, "You're actively hoping for miracles now?"

"With you _and_ Kazamori pregnant?" Shinjuurou asked, "We're going to need as many miracles as we can get for the next nine months."

"Speaking of," Rie began, "how do you think my dad will react when we tell him?"

"He'll probably try to kill me if he doesn't have cuffs on," Shinjuurou said, "so if he doesn't...maybe we should put it off?"

"Yeah...probably should just start off by telling him we're only just dating for the moment..." Rie shuddered a bit, "but then again, he might just deduce it on the spot."

**"Only one way to find out," Shinjuurou remarked.**

They waited in the airport terminal as one of the first flights into Japan after the chaos of the P Versus NP release had settled.

A surprising amount of people emerged from the connection hallway, and among the members of that crowd?

Kaishou, Rinroku, and an Air Marshal along side him.

"Ah, Rie, Shinjuurou," Rinroku greeted them with a smile, even as he dragged a suitcase behind him, "I'm glad to see you're both in one piece."

"Dad," Rie smiled at him, though made no move to hug him, "welcome back."

"You missed quite the mystery," Shinjuurou said.

"So I heard!" Rinroku laughed, "And saw too. That was quite the performance you gave up on that rooftop, Shinjuurou."

"If I'd known I was on TV like that, I would've downplayed it," Shinjuurou said flatly. "As it is, I've been getting a lot more case requests."

"Ah, the price of fame," Rinroku lamented, "I bet now you're starting to wish you remained 'defeated', hm?"

"Nah," Shinjuurou said, "I'd rather be famous and suffering from it than having Izumi out causing havoc along with that Aria-bot that's still at large."

"Fair point," Rinroku said. "I believe I'll have my hands full for the foreseeable future. Court hearings, public service sessions, and all without the comforts of home. I'm sorry it had to come to that, Rie," he said towards his daughter.

"Nah," who shrugged it off with her already mostly healed shoulders. "Don't worry about it, Dad, I was going to move out soon enough anyways."

"Move...out?" Rinroku blinked. "I don't remember you mentioning that before..."

"Shinjuurou offered me a bed at his place," Rie said happily, "as a birthday present."

Both detectives, and even the Air Marshal, got a bit of enjoyment from the look of surprise on the man's face.

"Oh...no," he realized suddenly, "I...I left on your birthday. Didn't I?"

"That you did," Rie nodded, placing her hands on her hips and grinning, "though I gotta say, dad, leaving on that trip was the best present you could've given me!"

"um...I don't quite understand?" Rinroku glanced between his daughter and the man whose life he'd once ruined.

"Lemme put it this way," Rie said with a savage grin, "you're going to have to figure this one out on your own." And with that, she turned on her heels and began to walk away, "C'mon, Shinjuurou! We've got wall paper to pick out!"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Shinjuurou smirked at Rinroku as he said that, "later, pops! Good luck at the trial!"

"What just happened?" Rinroku asked of the Air Marshal.

"I think you just met your future son-in-law," The Marshal replied.

The look of confusion on Rinroku's face was replaced by bemusement...and then shock as the words sunk in fully. "...Wait. Rie!" he shouted, "You don't mean to say...That that wall paper isn't for your room, is it?!"

His daughter stopped half-way across the terminal and spun on her heels to grin at him before shouting, "TRY TO FIGURE OUT IF IT'S A BOY OR A GIRL!"

"And now that's our cue to run," Shinjuurou said as Rinroku's shocked expression turned into fury.

"Yup!" Rie agreed. "That it is!"

And so they ran.

The Air Marshal too.

After all, he couldn't let the man under observation escape from custody before his trial, now could he?

"YUKI, SHINJUUROU!" Rinroku shouted as he chased after them, "I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!"

Or commit any murders.

That wouldn't be good for anyone.

**But what happens next? That's another story my friends. Another story entirely.**


	9. Afterword

**AFTERWORD.**

" _The Working Title Job_ " was an idea I've been toying around with for almost since the UN-GO series came out on DVD sometime last year. Initially, it was an idea for a series of one shot scenes about Rie and Shinjuurou, and Kazamori and Inga. It...it stayed in my head for a while, but ultimately, I never put "Pen To Paper" due to having other projects on hand, and not really having the experience to write those kinds of sequences that I had in mind.

Then came the idea of actually trying my hand at a murder mystery. I had these two scenes in my head from the start: A rooftop confrontation during a storm, and the initial crime scene: A tech analyst killed and strapped to a wall, being recorded and viewed on the internet by cameras that couldn't be seen. But, once again, I never put "Pen To Paper" and the idea stayed swirling around in my head. Then came the Sherlock Holmes story/tv series " _Elementary_ ", specifically the one featuring the equation "P Versus NP."

Suddenly, I had the inspiration to write the story, and the plot device to power it.

And then it spiraled so far out of those initial concepts that this story spawned itself pretty much on its own accord.

**THE RISING SUN**

Casting Izumi Koyama, the Prosecutor, as the one who ultimately caused all of this was from that initial scene on the rooftop. The original idea was that she was to have had her faith shaken from Hayami's betrayal, and that she decided to betray Rinroku, consulted the Analyst with setting up an 'unhackable website' and then murdered said analyst so that way the site couldn't be taken down legitimately by the police. But that idea was a bit shallow, especially upon reviewing the series itself. The Motive needed to change, and so came "The Rising Sun" as a group. Shinjuurou's figuring out her identity however, remained the same for the most part. The original idea was that she would have said something incriminating at the crime scene, and Shinjuurou would have remembered it. Circumstantial Evidence, however...I needed to have something to physically prove her identity and ties to the group. Hence the Year Book. Isana Koyama, Izumi's younger sister, was a last minute addition to the plot when I realized Izumi's connection to the Rising Sun was rather flimsy without it, as well as giving Izumi a driving force *TO* commit these traitorous actions.

  
Aranea Serket/Aria Kanzaki was the originally unnamed Tech Analyst. Her roll was expanded, and required an introduction before I could kill her off...thus, requiring a "First" murder to make the introduction necessary. Both names come from characters of other fictional stories- respectively from " _Homestuck_ " and " _Aria the Scarlet Ammo._ " Why? When it came time to introduce the tech, I pictured her as Aranea, especially given the recent events that _Homestuck_ 's Aranea had set into motion. But I needed an alternate identity for her in the yearbook, so, considering that Aranea's name was ALREADY a shout out, I went ahead and made Aranea's original identity Aria. It kept the "A" first name, as well as a sort of similar sounding name change. Killing Aranea off, however, was something I decided to do differently on the spur of the moment because of the TIMING of it all. There simply was NO WAY that Aranea's body could be gotten into those crates and HUNG over the city streets like that. And so I killed off an unfortunate Secretary whose death was never even reported to pull it off. She decided to upload her brain into the internet as a last ditch effort to escape using the same device Kenta used.

Kenta Otonoshi, the "First" victim but technically the second, was the guy who kicked off the entire plot. His name is a combination reference- "Kenta" from " _Digimon Tamers"_ , and "Otonoshi" from " _Place to Place._ " Kenta was given a niece as a result of the IngaXKazamori plot, but as well as to make him more of a victim than the others. Kenta's roll, as far as he knew, was to write the P Versus NP Program, and call Rinroku's house to see if he was home or not- every single one of their plans began in that way. He just didn't know that he was going to be used as the "first" victim in Plan B. Poor guy. He brain scanned his niece to save her life, and would have done such to his sister-in-law had she not died while he was unavailable.

  
Mitsuku Asahina was Kenta's second in command. He was the one who decided to start with Kenta over Kenta's secretary, and he and Aranea were the ones to go with the 'limb splitting' idea. He...got a bit explosive happy after the high school was destroyed. Wanted to go out in a bang, and was the one who put the idea of blowing up Rinroku's house too. Ideally with him in it. But beggars can't be choosers. His name is a corruption of "Mikuru Asahina" from...well...If you don't know what she's from, then I really don't know what to say. He's inspired by a gender bend of the same character.

  
****  
INVESTIGATORS.

Shinjuurou Yuuki and Rie Kaishou... There's a considerable lack of fanfiction for them as a couple. I thought I'd remedy that. The idea of them being called off of a date to a crime scene? And the first date at that? It was too interesting to pass up. The idea of Rinroku being out of town giving them an excuse to go on a date also served as an interesting opportunity for the case that Izumi put together. There's not much else to say on them other than that I'm not sure if I had their voices down perfectly in this. I think I might have been channeling Kyon for Shinjuurou. They're pretty in synch as a detective team, and are pretty decent as a couple too. Their growing mutual dislike of Rinroku will serve as fuel for a growing love for years to come.

  
Inga and Kazamori... There's even less for them. I think they're interesting together, and seeing them go from 'friends' to 'something more' as a result of an experiment on Inga's powers? Kazamori becoming a real girl is an idea to see how her mind, being artificial, would react to being suddenly organic, along with the consequences of her R.A.I. tendencies to want to 'pleasure' their owners. The idea of Inga gaining new powers from Bettenou was an interesting one, but ultimately, it became too GREAT of a power, and needed to be disposed of. Disposing of it turns out to be a plot point as well- transmuting various house hold appliances into real life animals. I already have a sequel idea based off of their plot arc in this one because I couldn't fit it all into this story! Their naming argument for the Cat is proving that they're not as in-synch as they could be, as well as proving that they're _not_ learning from their earlier mistakes. But saying more than that would be spoilers.

  
Mayoi Katawase is the new Police Chief after Hayami was arrested for the Bettenou Incident. Her name comes from the same Mayoi Katawase from " _Place to Place_ ," as does her whole character design and characteristic laugh (Hue Hue Hue). She's been promoted recently, and isn't too sure of herself. But she'd make as good of a detective as any in this story. With Izumi and Hayami both being traitors, I needed to come up with a character that could act as both of their replacements in future stories, and, also, someone who didn't turn out to be a bad guy in waiting. Katawase's going to have to learn to deal with all the mystical stuff that's been hidden in the background of the UN-GO world as well. She's got a lot ahead of her.

****  
CIVILIANS.

An Osada was included in this story simply for the purposes of delivering the ending Ironic Echo from episode 2 of the Anime, though her inclusion makes sense for her roll in the story as a safe-haven. She might have a more prevalent roll in stories to come, and or even join the Detectives on cases in the future!

  
R. Alicia. I. Otonoshi is Kenta's niece. She was brain scanned to save her life after a car accident. She's a human living in an R.A.I. body as a contrast to Kazamori. She was a Human becoming an R.A.I., and so would provide a way for Kazamori to reconcile the changes that resulted from the transformation. Alicia will probably continue to be that contrast for Kazamori in the future. In another contrast, she might even start a relationship of some kind with the elder of Fukashima's kids.

  
Daigo Fukashima is an Accountant for Steranko Security who has two sons. He's taken in Alicia as a favor to the deceased Kenta. There's not a lot to say about him.

****  
THE CASE.

"The Working Title Job" comes from Izumi's long time "Working for a Title" con, and the naming scheme comes from _Leverage_. Having Rinroku leave town for a government inquiry as to his actions in the series was a case of coincidence as to the Rising Sun's starting their plot. Inga's sudden loss of power was a game changer as well, and the Rising Sun's plot was destabilized due to it. How? I cannot say. In the end, even I don't truly understand how the original plot would have played out due to all of the circumstances that caused this story to become what it did. The world's appliances coming to life is another factor that's screwing the plans up. The movie Inga and Kazamori watched planted the idea in their heads of machines coming to life, and also pushed things along. That the movie was a world wide hit already also allowed the idea of a machine to organic transformation possible world wide.

There's not a lot more to say here that wasn't already said in-story!

Thanks for reading!

~CalumTraveler


End file.
